Chapter 5: The Census

Getting home wasn't really a problem and it was a good thing that the truck had a GPS autopilot feature because all my thoughts were on the incident that had just taken place. Something was REALLY wrong about that church, up until now I had not run into anyone else that had any kind of telepathic power, yet here was a building that was broadcasting it to the general public and what was the deal with the message anyway? I had heard that the church had different means of converting people to its faith, but brainwashing? I'm willing to bet that normal people couldn't even hear the signal, but were susceptible to its message all the same. By the time I had made it home I was in a really pissed off mood, I had figured that this was the group that was kidnapping/ brainwashing all the missing kids in the area and it didn't make sense that there would be more than one group of the church that would be willing to destroy a big part of central Texas just to blame a different religion. Pulling into the driveway I noticed that Shaylynn's car was missing, which meant that she was either still at the office or she had to run some kind of errand. Pushing out a mental 'feeler' I searched for her mind, I sifted through the general population until I found her familiar 'scent' and spoke to her "Hi sweetie, just wondering when you're going to be home. I kinda need to talk to you and ask a favor".

After our time together this intrusion no longer startled her as it used to and she was getting better at detaching a portion of her mind to reply, without taking away her concentration from what she was doing at the time. "I'm checking out a lead in the Paterson case, at shouldn't take me over an hour or so, but if you need me now then let me know and I'll turn around and head home, after all 'you're the boss'" I could feel the grin at her sarcasm. I thought for a second and sent to her "As of right now I want you to call the office and tell them that everyone on the Paterson case is to stop what they are doing and return to the office with whatever they have and turn it in. As of this moment the case is off-limits to anyone but me, it's just turned VERY dangerous and until you and I talk we can't be sure of anything that we get as far as information from any source other than me.

I'll try to explain it as soon as you get home; right now I need a long shower and a BIG drink. I love ya and will see ya soon". I listened to her say she would see me soon and felt her 'throw some love my way'. I walked into my home office, closing the door I pulled the forth book from the left of the second shelf, 'Frankenstein, ya I know it's corny, but you have to admit it is kinda poetic considering my background'. The bookshelf swung away from the wall to block off the door to my office, now no one could enter unless they had high grade explosives 'two inches of homogenous steel at the back of the bookshelf', 'did I mention that I'm not paranoid, there are people out to get me'. Using my retinal pattern, opened a sixteen button keypad (two wrong entries and the whole system locked down and would take an act of God to open afterwards), I punched in a twenty-four character code, waited for the yellow light the entered a thirty-two character code and the wall slid away to revel a small elevator, stepping inside the door closed. Smiling as I looked at the selector buttons for which floor for the elevator to descend, I reached up and pulled a lever in the top right corner. Down, down, and down, for twelve seconds, four feet per second, forty-eight feet, and the door opened, the light came up. I walked out of the elevator paused and said "Daddy's Home", I listened as the computer system replied "and all is right with the world" in a little girl's voice. "Hi Tabby, how is the world of bank theft coming along?" I asked. It/She replied "Not bad we just found another off shore account for the Mexican Drug Runners, I took it all and sent half to The United Children Education Fund, the rest is in six different accounts in the E.U. and two here in the U.S., Ted Pope's account just received a five million dollar retainer from a company in Japan, or at least that's what it looks like to the federals. On another note unit seven is running a little hot and should be looked at, currently it has caused a .06% drop in overall efficiency." My computer is what you would call a Beowulf Array (it is thirty, 45GHz desktops all networked on a fiber optic system, each unit has 128 Gigabytes of RAM, and has a 200TB solid state memory core. To say that I have a killer computer system is HUGE understatement). I thought for a second and replied "Increase cooling by ten percent and if the problem continues, use one of the redundant systems and clone the drive during maintance phase. Right now I have a new search protocol. Link with all news and police sources, find out if there is a correlation to the proximity of Catholic churches and unexplained disappearances of people, also find out if certain churches are getting a large amount of converts over the past year or so. Also look for any strange occurrences having to do with any church. I will ask for an update in eighteen hours, utilize sixty percent of processing power for this task, remainder for normal operations."

Finishing this I walked over to my storage unit and pulled out one of my lock boxes and put the 'hand' into it, then went back upstairs, closed everything and went in for a nice long soak in the shower. Twenty minutes later I was in the living room with a beer watching the tri-vid tank, "In today's news S.W.A.T. was called in Little Rock, Arkansas as what are being called Muslim extremists entered a Methodist church and proceeded to destroy every room in the church. Police were called and were taken hostage upon entering the place of worship and beaten by the unnamed persons. As S.W.A.T. officers arrived at that location the church erupted in a massive explosion, which left the two officers and an unknown number of assailants dead in the rubble. Spokesman for the Little Rock Police Department, John Davies said that this was an outrage of the highest order and would not be allowed to go unanswered by his fellow officers. The Muslim League of America has issued a statement that this is a tragedy and has no idea which of its members, if any is responsible for this travesty. This is the second time in six months that the Islamic community has been linked to a bombing or attempted bombing within the continental United States, the first of which was the aborted detonation of a so called "dirty bomb" in the Dallas area. That explosion was stopped by the quick work of the Dallas S.W.A.T. sniper who shot the trigger device from the hands of what has been called a religious martyr, the identity of which is still being withheld". "In other news..." I turned down the volume... 'S.W.A.T. sniper ... right, I didn't know I had been hired ... where is my paycheck?' I'm willing to bet that if a DNA test is ever run of the remains of the 'extremists' will turn out to be grade A, 100% American, something is going on and I needed to get to the bottom of it before it blew up in my face.

I got up, walked to the kitchen and pulled two 16oz steaks from the freezer, threw them into the flash oven, set it for medium, from the fridge I grabbed two large potatoes and nuked them. Just as I was putting everything on the table Shaylynn waked threw the front door (it's kinda nice knowing just how soon she will get home). I took her in my arms and hugged the living hell outta her, I could forget about everything else for a little while as long as I was with her and she was safe. I set her down and she looked at me with concern on her face "What was that about baby?" she said "Did you have a bad day?" "Let's not talk about it till after dinner" I huffed "and only then after I've had a shot or two". We sat down and ate, very quiet, just the sound of chewing, afterward we cleaned up then walked into the living room, I poured us both a double shot of Connemara Single Malt Whiskey, handed her glass to her and sat down next to her on the couch. "I know that if I was to tell you what happened today it would sound like I was off my rocker, so maybe it would be better if I just showed you", she nodded her head as I connected with her then showed everything that had happened today, it took all of about two seconds after which she sat back for a moment to think over the situation. Finally she looked at me saying "Ted, this is something way bigger than just a few missing kids and isolated terrorists attacks, if the Catholic Church is involved in this we could be looking a new crusade or something worse". I nodded "I know, listen I've got a sample that I would like you to give to the lab for analysis to figure out what it's made of, also I need you to look into 'The Church of the Holy Resurrection', make sure that it is affiliated with the Catholic Church, but whatever you do, do not for any reason go to that church." Thinking for a moment I said "Listen, Tomorrow I want you to explain to all of our employees that until further notice that all of them are to stay away from all churches, I know that this might be a problem for anyone that is overly devout, but it's just temporary and it's not picking out any one religion." "You do realize that this is going to piss off a few people don't you?" "Yeah, but it might also save a few lives, including ours." I know that in hindsight it was a bad idea, but I just remembered that I gave that hinky priest my card so he had my name, and business. We sat around for a few more hours and then made our way to the bedroom (which is none of your business). The next morning after Shaylynn was off to work I sat down for a few minutes to listen to the news, when a story came on about finding the missing Paterson boy's body along with the body of a priest and a note that seemed to be about committing suicide rather than having their love affair exposed. I thought to myself 'I'll bet that the priest was my buddy from yesterday', it seems that someone was cutting their losses and covering up everything. I figured it was time to get down to business so I got dressed, armed and was just about to go down to check on my search program when the doorbell rang.