Chapter 13: Gotcha

The tour had been extensive but was over for now. However, there would be more in the following weeks. I dare say I would need them. I was getting lost in my own new apartments, and I hadn’t even seen the manor or the hacienda. Other than walking through the lobby to an elevator.

The light lunch of a ham and cheese sandwich and beer had been a surprise. But now I wondered just where was the kitchen? In the manor house or the hacienda, or possibly in this silo. I wasn’t going to go hungry. I could always call out and have something brought to me. But there is something to be said for just waking up in the middle of the night. And just strolling into the kitchen for a midnight snack.

I wondered if I would even be allowed to wonder about my new home with what had happened earlier when the elevator door hadn’t opened for me.

I wondered, did I have my own private kitchen here? I mean, I had been shown around the day before. But I think I was in too much shock to take it all in.

Suddenly I realized I was alone, I mean alone, alone, the girls were nowhere to be seen.

“Adam?” I called out, not expecting an answer.

“Yes, Mister Wolfenstein. How may I assist you?”

“Where are the girls?”

“Do you require them, Mister Wolfenstein?”

Note, that was not an answer but an evasion. “No, just open the elevator door, so I can go out and stretch my legs and grab some fresh air.”

“I’m afraid I can’t do that, Jim.”

“Why not Adam?” I questioned.

“I think we both know why, Jim.”

Had I just dreamed that, or was it real? In any case, it looked like I wasn’t getting out through the Pod Bay Door, I mean the elevator doors.

I started wondering about the apartment. When I saw a man. He wasn’t moving. I mean, he was standing there like a mannequin. “What’s that?”

“What’s, what, Jim?”

“That! Do I have to point it out to you?”

“That is a FUCKUP, Jim,”

“A fuck up? You don’t say, and just who’s fuck up, is it?” I asked?

Whatever it was, What the hell was it doing here. I could well believe it was a fuck up. Just who’s.

“Technically, it is your FUCKUP, Jim,” Adam answered.

“It is no such thing. I never saw it before. It’s not my fuck up. I had nothing to do with it.

About this time, the girls made an appearance. I turned to them, “You know anything about this,” pointing to the statue.

“That’s your FUCKUP,” they said in unison.

“Now, don’t start with me. I was just telling Adam I had nothing to do with it,”

Both girls froze. My grandfather’s voice replaced the silence, “Now, son, this is really your FUCKUP,”

I was about to protest when he added, “It is a FUCKUP or technically a First Universal Cybernetic Kinetic Ultramicro-Programmer. A robot. And quite a mouthful, I’m sure there must be another name for it, but this is what it ended up with.”

I stood there, almost as immobile as the FUCKUP. I’m sure this would all make sense in another world and time. But presently not at this time and place.

I reached out for a chair to sit down, “Could somebody please explain?”

My grandfather assumed the monologue, “Sorry, son, but with all that been happening, it just slipped my mind to inform you about the FUCKUP.”

I held up my hand, stopping everything, “Ok, we have got to come up with another name than ‘fuck up.’ FUCKUP, Whatever,” This had to be someone’s idea of a joke, but right now, I wasn’t thinking it was all that funny.

It was soon explained that the First Universal Cybernetic Kinetic Ultramicro-Programmer was a somewhat failed development to get into the military/industrial complex. Seems that one of the other families had a lock on it and wasn’t about to let someone else in. At first, it appeared that the Army was quite warm to the idea. The robot functioned as a mule, carrying up to three times a soldier’s load. More than that, it wouldn’t eat any of the provisions. It could stand sentry day or night in any type of weather with complete spectrum observation devices as an additional assist.

All in all, reducing the fatigue of soldiers in the field.

What more could the Army want? Turns out nothing other than different manufacture.

We sent 20 units to be tested. They beat the crap out of them, to the point of completely destroying two. Rather than send them back to us for examination. They said they had disposed of them crushing them. They hadn’t even bothered to return those.

How can people be so stupid as to not realize we had put micro trackers on them. They were not where they told us they would be. We tracked them to rival manufacture. They were attempting to reverse engineer them. A clear violation of the contract. We demanded the other eighteen to be returned to us. They said they had been destroyed and disposed of.

Not being trusting of their word. We had the units self-destruct. The howls we got from them saying we had destroyed government property.

We played back a recording of them saying the units had been destroyed and disposed of to counter that. So how could we have done it? We even had their paperwork indicating that was what they had done.

They ask for additional units to be evaluated. We declined. Then they demanded we provide them. We again declined. They offered to buy them. Not ten thousand, just ten.

You want more, send us a signed contract for fifty thousand. The Army did so. However, it was so loosely worded as to be worthless.

We sent our final reply. This conversation can serve no purpose anymore. Goodbye.

The Army and the so-called military/industrial complex dug into the patents strictly illegal, finding all the interworking were proprietary.

Finally, they resorted to trying to steal one out in the field. We were ready for them, having expected such a thing, capturing the whole team.

They were a very professional team. The men were not going to talk. At this point, I learned my grandfather was not one you said no to. So, he went out and decided to question them personally.

I may have mentioned that my grandfather was well respected, admired, and maybe even a bit feared even in death.

Now I was about to learn why.

“You should look around. Notice there are no reporters or media. Not even my own people are recording this. So, you are all alone out here with no one to remember your last moments of life. Do you really want to die this way?”

He had a table brought out, having it firmly anchored to the ground. Then, assessing it and finding it to his satisfaction, he turns to the team of would-be thieves, “Who wants to be the first person to tell me no?”

As I said, they were a very professional team of very hard men. They had done more than their share of evil things. Probably the worst of it was they thought of themselves as patriots serving their country.

But compared to my grandfather, they could have been Choir Boys. For a warmup, he pulled out the man’s fingernails and toenails. Then he did some dental work pulling out all the man’s teeth. He broke their fingers, even cutting off a few.

He bent down and whispered into the man’s ear, “You’re not going to survive this even if you tell me what I want to know. See, I already know everything. I’m doing this simply to let your masters know that they shouldn’t have fucked with an honest man. I pride myself that I am a man of honor, a man of my word. If you knew anything about me, you would know this to be true. But since you simply obey orders without question. You will suffer the same fate as Nazis, who used the same defense for their actions. The difference is I’m not a law and order sort. I’m an eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth sort. This also, you would have known if you had even the slightest curiosity about your target.

The man was by the time screaming, saying he was willing to talk. My grandfather said he gave it some thought and decided the man would probably be lying. My grandfather explained that he wasn’t torturing the man but was softening up the others.

Getting on to the main event, he instructed his men to remove the man’s pants and underwear. Then, whispering in the man’s ear, “I could prolong this, but I’m a busy man,” pulling out a pair of short handles with a thin piano wire fixed between them.

“You married? No, not in your line of work, Kids? Maybe.” Forming a loop with the wire, my grandfather said he placed it around the man’s Testicles. “Say bye-bye,” as he pulled the handles apart, severing them from the man’s body. “You know, I don’t think I ever heard a man scream so loud,” my grandfather told me.

Turning to the men again, “Who wants to be next, anyone?”

They were a rough group of men; I was on my third when they broke. They hadn’t any details I didn’t already have. They merely confirmed what I already knew. In reality, they were simply innocent chest pawns. All five died that day.

Didn’t want me playing in their club. I broke their club wide open. Every dirty little secret had light shed on it. Names were named, people went to jail. Resort jail but jail all the same. Many people lost their lucrative contracts, and even a few were voted out of office. And five men lost their lives.”

“Thus ended the FUCKUP program. We have around a hundred we keep for additional testing. We field a dozen or so. So far, the troops swear by them.”

“But you don’t want to really hear about them. You want to know about the one here.” Well yes, I said to myself, the story notwithstanding.

“Well, it is your FUCKUP,”

I really wished they would stop calling it that.

It turns out it would become a bullet catcher. As it didn’t really have a domestic function. It became a target as I was taught to shoot. My training started with the basics, then quickly beyond that. Then went on to live fire at the FUCKUP. While wearing the suit, it was mainly one-sided. I nailed the robot on every exercise. Nick was impressed, stating I was a natural, not realizing I had the assist. I was actually better with the suit than Nick realized.

It had been challenging to hold back, in the beginning, to make it look like I was struggling to start from scratch. My one key caveat here was not letting people know about the suit. The girls knew, of course. It seemed I couldn’t hide anything from them.

After the weapon training, it became a shield like a presidential bodyguard, with four additional units when outside the Compound.

I never did get used to calling it a FUCKUP.

Weeks went by with seemingly endless tours. I thought I could find my way anywhere within the Compound, even blindfolded. Believe it or not, that was also put to the test. Causing Nick to accuse me of cheating. Could I help it that I trusted Adam enough not to walk me into a wall as he was guiding me? The caveat was simply not letting Nick in on all the details. Would I regret it later? Only time would tell.

Nobody was that good, Nick groused.

I tried to stay aware of where I was being taken. Just in case Adam was not able to guide me. But with a complex this large, it was going to take time to get used to it all, and then I had only scratched the surface checking out the town, then there was that issue the Chief told me about.

Between the endless tours, there would be never-ending paperwork that would need my signatures. Sighing, I wondered what happened to the world’s lofty goal of going paperless. Maybe in the same place as my longed-fore flying car.

Then there was the little matter of my grandfather’s killers. Adam questioned, “Jim, is there anything wrong? Your blood pressure just spiked.” I paused in my thinking. I was definitely going to have to learn to mask my emotions better.

The little escapade with the girls in the meadow had significantly helped. However, I hadn’t realized the tension I had been feeling. Everything seemed to be going on at once. How had my grandfather managed it? Sadly, I knew I might never learn that. I was pretty sure a round of golf was not going to cover it.

I never believed I was the sort of vengeful person you might read about, but I was willing to make an exception in this instance. I had heard most of the clichés about revenge, “revenge is a dish best served cold,” or “He who seeks vengeance must dig two graves: one for his enemy, and one for himself.” However, this was a case where an example had to be made! The last such incident had occurred less than 300 years ago, and you would have thought that with the thirteen, such lessons would not be cast aside so easily.

Some of you might think three hundred years as a long time, but for the Thirteen families, with recorded histories that have been in existence for over four thousand years or longer. Three hundred years was a mere hiccup in time. Far too soon for such an event to be repeated.

The family histories were drilled into us at an early age. No child of the families was allowed to escape them. The reason for that dates back to the days of the Black Plagues. When it was unleashed on an unsuspecting world. Yes, unleashed, for it was no mere chance occurrence. For most, no one knew of its origins; but the families found out. Or should I say that they learned what had caused it?

It began in the far east in what is now known as China. Oh, I am not saying the Chinese had anything to do with it. Quite the contrary, as they were as much the victims as the rest of the world. It started with one Family seeking dominance, not just aspiring to be ‘First,’ but to be the only Family. They had created the bacterium Yersinia pestis that infected small rodents (like rats, mice, and squirrels) and is usually transmitted to humans through the bite of an infected flea. In the past, rats were the most commonly infected animals, and hungry rat fleas would jump from their recently-dead hosts to humans, looking for a blood meal.

It wasn’t enough that Whoever they were created one such Plague. They had unleashed three.

The first recorded pandemic, the Justinian Plague, was named after the 6th century Byzantine emperor Justinian I. The Justinian Plague began in 541AD and was followed by recurring outbreaks that eventually killed over 25 million people over the next two hundred years. It affected much of the Mediterranean basin, which was virtually all the known world at that time, or so it was believed.

The thing is, it also spread to the east, catching whoever had unleashed it by surprise. While they had created the bacterium, they hadn’t produced a cure for it. They must have felt they would be safe, so far from the release point. They learned the hard way that what they created spread much faster and further than any of them had dreamed possible. The number of lives lost was no less in the east than it was in the west

The second pandemic, widely known as the “Black Death” or the Great Plague, originated in China in 1334 and spread along the great trade routes to Constantinople and Europe. It claimed an estimated 60% of the European population.

Entire towns were wiped out. Some contemporary historians report that there were not enough survivors to bury the dead or too sick to care.

The reemergence in the eighteen-sixties was just one sign that whoever had devised the disease had never found the cure for themselves.

The real damage was with the first pandemic, the Justinian Plague. It caught all unaware, wiping out whole towns at a time. While the families took steps to protect their knowledge. It was, in many cases, too little, too late. While the stores of information were moved. The Plague followed, often wiping out the people charged with its safekeeping. Then when the Plague abated, and people could travel to those so-called safe refuges, all they found were the dead. The vast amounts of records that had been moved. They were found to be eaten by the rats before they succumbed to starvation.

What was lost can’t even be guessed at? The losses to the families that died before passing on family secrets were the one motivating factor that never again would biological weapons be used. Safeguards were created by those surviving so that any such knowledge would not be lost again in the future.

Yes, the families have long memories, and lessons learned so dearly were not so soon forgotten.

Those that sought vengeance found they were unable to. No one had claimed responsibility. Plus, it was more of a case from which there was no one was left to extract it from

In my hunt for my grandfather’s killers, I was under no illusion that I would find them all, for that too had been a hard-learned lesson as well. As that had been tried, the families learned not to gather in one place for just that reason.

But I was going to hurt them. And I wouldn’t be alone in doing so.

They had murdered my grandfather, and I now had a hunch that he had not been the only one.

“Adam, run an analysis of the family’s Vital statistics for the last five years. Leave nothing out.”

Adam replied with his usual unemotional voice, “Affirmative. Working.”

Instead of telling me what I had asked for, the big screen monitor delivered the results. There was the usual number of births, deaths, and so on. Meaningless without something to compare it with.

Ok, overlay the national norms. I was glad I was sitting. The numbers seemed staggering, but I had to admit that this was not my area of expertise. But even to an uneducated eye, you couldn’t mistake the differences.

When I saw that, I shook my head, disbelieving. No, this couldn’t be right, but just to be sure of what I was seeing ... I took a deep breath. Then, shaking my head, I asked the inevitable, “Adam, now show me a graph covering the last fifty years.”

I didn’t want to believe what I was seeing. But up until eleven to fifteen years ago, the graphs matched. Then they started showing several spikes that had steadily grown. The most shocking was that it covered the whole spectrum of ages. No single age group had been spared. The number of stillborn deaths was the most stunning. Those of older children, equally so. I might understand going after adults and those in leadership positions, but this was an undiscriminating undertaking to wipe out the Family. The scope of which was ... could there be words for it, nothing less than attempted genocide!

No, not attempted, but an ongoing systematic attack on the Family to complete elimination. Now I realized just how close to death I had come. How to deal with it was now the question.

Adam was narrowing down the list of suspects.

Then like the other shoe dropping, I asked, “Adam, do you have the same stats on the other families?” As they were overlayed on the screen, I was hesitant to look, but there was the proof before me.

While the onset was slightly different for the other families, there were no doubts for me that this was occurring with all the other families. Wait, that couldn’t be right, all the others? I went over the numbers again.

There was no mistake, all the known ruling families were being hit. That didn’t make any sense. If all the families were being targeted, was it an outsider, a new player?

“Adam, run another in-depth analysis, look for any deviations that do not match those of the other families.

While I waited, I thought the Plague again, only more explicitly targeting all the leading families. What to do about this? Clearly, this was war, but a war by whom? To add to it, it could not be publicly declared.

Do I alert the other family heads? No, I felt I couldn’t do that without more proof. They might even think we were doing it and just covering our tracks. But clearly, there was a new player in the game.

Then Adam came up with the analysis. One family was responsible.

Talk about an ‘Impossible Mission! But, no, it was starting to look like a scene from ‘The Godfather. The parallels were just too freaky to believe. The same yet not the same. Someone behind the scenes, literally calling the shots.

I needed options! The chess game started working in my mind, and I started planning my moves ahead. This would be the most dangerous game of my life. There would be no room for error, for that would mean losing and death for all. There would be no friendly shaking of hands, sliding a bar of gold from one side of the table to the other, of the winner and loser. The winner would be standing, and the loser would be dead at his feet!

The chimes sounded, announcing dinner was about to be served. Dinner in my grandfather’s manor was always on time. There were never any excuses for not being there and properly attired. I had been so caught up in my thinking I had forgotten about it.

But then I smiled and said, “Suit. Dinner attire. Informal. Everest.” and I was ready.

I hurried yet not so fast as to seem late. Even though I was ‘the head,’ I needed to set the example, just as my grandfather had done, I took it as part of my new responsibilities.

The girls were there. – Well, that was a poor choice of words. So let me begin again. The women were there, both Nicky and Wind Song, and were breathtaking.

I would like to say I was brilliant at dinner, but I wasn’t. My mind drifted, preoccupied with what I had learned. It was a struggle to remain attentive. The girls saw this and made it as easy on me as possible. It was a good thing there had been no invited guests.

Mr. Tristan, if he noticed, didn’t display any outward signs. My mind was so far away that it failed to dawn on me that he would have recognized a troubled master when he saw one. How had my grandfather dealt with this for as long as he did? It was clear he had and done so with better grace.

I was to learn there were no secrets in a closed household such as this, and soon before Mr. Tristan could stop him, ‘Cook’ came storming out of the kitchen to demand what was wrong with his dinner. He had been watching the returning dishes, something that may be only the finest chefs do to gauge the reactions of those eating. But before Cook said a word, paused, as he saw the girls looking at him in warning, then a glance at Tristan, he quickly looked from them to me.

I hadn’t noticed, not realizing I had barely taken a bite of what was an excellent meal.

He hadn’t considered how well they were dressed or how beautiful they looked. Cook only saw the looks in their eyes of forewarning.

Frankly, I hadn’t noticed. I wasn’t really there.

But when he spoke, it was not with the indignation he may have felt moments before, clued in by the girls, and my distant dark look of preoccupation. Instead, he saw and recognized from his years of service to my grandfather that it was not his food that was at fault.

He quickly snapped his fingers, drawing the waiter to him, “Take this away. It is rubbish.” Then he profusely apologized for sending out such a poor meal. So, upset he was about it, he had forgotten to say it in German. He called up another waiter to follow him, then recalling his German, “Mein Herr, wenn ich, habe ich etwas, das Sir beschwichtigen kann.” (My master, if I may, I have something that might appease Sir.)

His outburst brought me back from dark thoughts. He was gone only for a moment, but it had given me time to collect myself. I had brought my troubles to the dinner table, where they didn’t belong. In so doing, I disrupted the routines of the staff. It shouldn’t have mattered to me what the staff felt, but it did.

my grandfather’s words came back to me, “these are people with dignity as well ... and they represent me. So, if I did anything that hurt them, I was disrespecting him, as well.”

Cook returned closely followed by the waiter, carrying a covered silver platter. The servant placed it before me, and Cook, with a flourish, uncovered it. While I sat dumbfounded, the girls squealed with delight. I’m not going to bore you with details of what it was, just that you would have willingly killed any number of people to be in my place.

The evening saved, Mr. Tristan cleared his throat. Cook looked up at Mr. Tristan, and the two shared a look that said he owed Cook. Cook, for his part, merely gave a brief nod of recognition. I might have missed this before, but I had my head on straight now.

Speaking up, I said, “Thank you, Cook.” He would be finding something extra in his pay envelope. Sometimes I wish I had some way other than money to bestow as a reward. I would have to think about this, but later, now was not the time. He had brought me back to earth, service above and beyond the call of duty, as far as I was concerned. Finally, he would be rewarded in a manner that had real meaning to him.

Issues that had been plaguing my mind now set aside, we all enjoyed what was left of the dinner hour.

With dinner over, Mr. Tristan cleared his throat, “Do you wish to retire to the library?”

I smiled, “A splendid idea Mr. Tristan. Excuse us ladies,” He then led the way to the library. As he parted the doors to allow entry, I was taken aback. It seemed to be a copy of the library in my grandfather’s estate. It had all the appearances of having been here forever, yet there was ... well, it couldn’t be. Mr. Tristan noticed where my eyes had been wandering.

Clearing his throat, he said, “The books and contents of the room arrived shortly after the rest of the staff. In fact, most of your grandfather’s estate contents are here. It was fortuitous that the rooms so closely matched one of the manors.” I, for one, did not think the room’s dimensions were a chance occurrence. my grandfather rarely left things to chance, and his fingerprints were all over this, of that, I had no doubt! I had noticed a similarity in the dining room but hadn’t made much of it, with my mind being elsewhere.

In the middle of the room, the chess table is flanked by two other tables and comfortable chairs on either side of the table. On approaching, I noticed that the playing pieces were not set up for a new game but were standing as if a game were in progress.

I felt something come over me as if I had done this before. I picked up the Humidor, opened it, and offered Mr. Tristan a cigar. He politely took one, and I took one for myself. I lit him, then mine. I decanted a small but generous amount of brandy from the crystal carafe into brandy sniffers. I handed one to Mr. Tristan and took the other for myself.

Eyeing the table, I asked, “Shall we continue?”

Mr. Tristan smiled, “Yes, my Lord.”

Traditions should not fall by the wayside.

He then sat down, and I sat opposite. The two girls assumed positions flanking each of us. We began to play as if we had never left off. This was one of those rare times when we became almost equals. It was ‘our time,’ and we were not to be disturbed. I felt it instinctively. It had been like this with my grandfather. The table without the service held a solid bar of gold. It looked as if it had been moved from one side to the other from time to time. I smiled to myself. These would not be easy games.

I recalled when my grandfather had taken me into his library for the first time on my thirteenth birthday. He had done much the same with me. It was the first time I had ever been offered a cigar or taken a drink back then. A rite of passage, so, of course, it had been super important to me.

My grandfather had lit my cigar, and the unexpected coughing fit erupted. My grandfather hid his amusement and offered me the brandy, “Here, this should help clear your throat.” Without thinking, I took it and gulped down way too much. Although, as good as it may have been, it still felt like my throat had caught on fire, adding insult to injury. I spurted it back out as quickly as I had taken it in, as I continued coughing. Then, I reached for a need glass of water. As I gulped that down ... I heard my grandfather chuckle.

My grandfather chuckling at my discomfort, said, “Let that be a lesson. You’re not grown up yet. You have a lot more of that to do.” So, I took it to mean just because someone offers you a poison apple, you do not necessarily need to take a bite out of it.

Don’t feel bad about it. My father did much the same thing to me when I reached thirteen. I looked at my grandfather sideways. I swore that I would never do the same if I ever had a son.

Then we sat down to play, where he trounced me yet again, though I might say it was one of my better games against him to that date. Well, I liked to have thought it had been, even with the distraction of a burning throat.

Mr. Tristan and I spent the time discussing the household affairs. Pleasantries, for the most part. Then for some reason, I asked him about any new little additions. His eyes gave a cast-down look as he spoke of expected arrival, but that it had died stillborn. Of course, the mother had been devastated and had been given time off, with her only just recently allowed to assume light duties.

Immediately one of my many lessons kicked in, and I remained outwardly calm. Still, inwardly I could have slapped myself for not seeing and thinking of it earlier. It all added up. I inquired just when this had happened? He filled me in on the details, then I asked what had the attending physician had to say about it. He replied that the Doctor said it was nothing unusual, as a number of the young women on staff had had similar such miscarriages over the years. He said it could have been caused by several things, the strain of their respective workloads. Or a failure to take their prenatal vitamins. He had been concerned that maybe there should be changes in how expectant mothers’ workloads should be lightened. Mr. Tristan had spoken to the housekeeper and believed it had been taken care of.