The Final Trial, page 53
part #3 of Level Up Series
Almost.
There was still the most important thing left — but I didn’t doubt for one second that Kira would go along. My interface never made mistakes.
Now we both were at our parents’ summer cottage. Dad, Mom and my nephew Cyril went in for a nap after the big lunch which consisted of an assortment of salads, a hearty bowl of borsch and platefuls of meat and cabbage stew. Kira and I stayed outside, lounging in the garden hammocks attached to a large pine tree.
My sister produced a vape pen out of her purse and took a deep drag on it.
“Don’t look at me like that,” she said, noticing my surprised stare. “With my kind of job, smoking is the lesser evil. At least this way it’s not as bad for my lungs.”
“I don’t mind,” I said. “Just didn’t expect it, that’s all. You’ve always been my role model, Sis.”
“What if I’m fed up with being a role model? You have any idea how hard it is, being the big sister? Mom keeps calling me every day asking me about you. She still thinks I’m responsible for you,” she added with a sad smile. “Never mind. Spit it out. What’s all this about and when should I expect a visit from Interpol?”
“Do you remember that day last May when Yanna walked out on me?”
“Sure,” she nodded, letting out a thick cloud of vapor.
The air smelled of sweet bread rolls — a warm flavor which mingled with the aromas of the last day of summer, creating a very special atmosphere. I took in big lungfuls of it, trying to commit to memory the moment scented with apples, flowers, pine needles and roadside dust.
“Did you notice how I changed after that?”
“You bet,” she choked on her cigarette and exploded in a bout of coughing. “So is it because of her?”
“To a degree, yes. She was instrumental in my transformation, sort of. But it started even before that. I’m gonna tell you everything now. I can’t discuss the really important things before I know that you believe me. But first, allow me a small demonstration to prove my point. Look at me.”
Kira froze. When I disappeared, she dropped her vaper and very nearly fell out of her hammock.
“Fucking shit!” she exclaimed. A neighbor’s dog began barking like mad behind the fence. “Phil, you shouldn’t joke like that with me. I have a heart problem. Where are you?”
“I’m right in front of you. I’m going to touch you now, so don’t be scared,” I reached out, my fingers brushing her smooth cheek.
Kira flinched but didn’t recoil. She lay her hand on my arm and cussed in amazement.
“Now I’m gonna make myself visible again. Are you ready? Look right in front of you.”
I disabled Stealth and Vanish and was unable to suppress laughter looking at her long face and saucer eyes as she rubbed them with her hands. She was a sight! Normally, she never lost her cool… provided she wasn’t mad at me.
“What’s this for circus tricks, little brother?” she took another tug on her vaper the moment she’d recovered from shock. “What the fuck was that? Did you practice to be a magician? A flippin’ conjurer? David fucking Copperfield?”
Whenever she was nervous, she just couldn’t stop talking. Still, I had no time to listen to her theories.
“Shut up,” I interrupted her. “Keep watching. I’m gonna walk a few steps back and you hurl your vaper at me as hard as you can.”
“Eh… why? It costs a lot of money.”
“Just because. It’s not gonna break, don’t worry. On my signal, just throw it at me and make it as hard as you can.”
I counted ten steps back and raised my hand. “On the count of three! One… two… three!”
Just as she hurled her hefty Vaper at me, I activated Sprint.
Time slowed down. I could see that she missed, her vaper flying in a different direction. I ran over to it, caught it in flight, then ran back to Kira, laid the vaper on the ground by her feet and returned to my place, then disabled Sprint.
Kira sat there, blinking in amazement. “What was that? You sort of blurred and… and where’s that goddamn cigarette?”
“Look down.”
When she saw the vaper lying by her feet, her jaw dropped. She picked it up and fumbled with it, studying it as if looking for a catch. Mechanically she took a deep tug on it and fell pensive, tilting her head to one side.
No points for guessing what she was thinking about.
“Any more tricks?” she finally asked.
“Why not? Wanna play questions and answers?”
“You bet! I have lots of questions to ask you!” she sounded pleased. “What about all those millions of dollars on my bank account? Where do they come from? What did you-”
“Wait,” I was forced to interrupt her again. “The other way round. I’m gonna ask you questions and you’re gonna reply. Then I’ll tell you whether you told me the truth. But every now and then, you need to tell a lie. Think you can do it?”
“I don’t know. You’re the expert in blatant lies in our family. But we could try. Go ahead.”
“Would you like to get married?”
“No!”
“You’re lying. You’d love to get married. Where are you going on vacation this year?”
“To the Maldives.”
“That’s right. Are you going alone?”
“No, Cyril’s coming with me.”
Her words breathed warmth. She’d told me a half-truth: there was somebody else going with them.
“That’s almost right. You’re going with Cyril and someone else. Is that correct?”
“Well,” she drawled, “that’s easy to guess.”
“What’s the guy’s name?”
“Andrew,” she said.
Her answer sent a cold shiver down my spine. “That’s a lie.”
“Okay, Michael.”
“That’s a lie, too.”
“Sergei,” she blushed and fidgeted, then went pale.
“Another lie.”
“I haven’t got anyone!”
Her words felt warm but not hot enough. “I think you do, but your relationship is probably isn’t as intimate as you’d like it to be. Is that right?”
“That’s enough! This is all bullshit, Phily!” she snapped indignantly without actually answering my question. “What else do you want from me?”
The fine thread of an emotional and sexual connection led from Kira to a certain Arvidas, a lower-ranking employee at the same bank. I studied his profile. Not a good match for my sister. The guy was an irresponsible lothario.
“Kira, just trust me. Arvidas isn’t the best choice for you. Apart from you, he also has a relationship with an Olga Vilskaya and Natalia Loseva. You know them?”
“What?!” Kira flew off the hammock like a furious harpy, tripped and very nearly fell. She grabbed me by the shoulders. “What are you on about? How would you know about that? If this is a joke, it’s a real cruel one, Phil!”
“I’m sorry. I promise I’ll explain it to you a bit later on today, but it’s not a joke. Let’s just finish with this demonstration, okay?”
“I don’t want any more of your demonstrations!” she replied tersely, returning to the hammock.
She stared at the sky, not looking at me anymore. Understanding her state, I didn’t push her any further. She was tugging on her vaper while I went and lay on the lawn next to her.
Biting a sweet blade of grass, I lay my hands behind my head and stared at the clouds. We spent a good ten minutes like that until she calmed down a bit.
“Didn’t you have something else?” she said dryly. “Show me.”
“This is the last thing I’m going to show you. After that, I’ll have to talk long and hard. Have you got your telephone with you? Good. Give me the name of a good friend of yours that wouldn’t mind you disturbing them right now.”
“Okay…” she scrolled through the contacts, looking through the names. “Let’s see… here. Irina Atanova.”
I found her among Kira’s connections together with her address. “Your friend Irina Atanova, born in 1986. You met her at a financial workers’ conference in Istanbul four years ago. She’s not married and has no kids. She works for the Pyramid Financial Group. She has a sister called Marina. At the moment, she’s at the Canary’s Emporium shopping mall. Give her a call now and ask her where she is.”
The moment she’d heard the name of the mall, she was already dialing the number. She spoke at length. This wasn’t a brief masculine exchange along the lines of, “Hi, where are you? Cool man, bye!” This was a whole feline-style ceremony with lots of sniffing and circling each other, meowing about all sorts of irrelevant things. They started by discussing a few characters unknown to me, not realizing that I’d immediately looked them up, just for kicks, and dispelled a few flawed bits of gossip the two women were exchanging.
Then finally, Kira moved to the point. Having heard her friend’s answer, she hung up.
“She is at the Canary’s. How did you know?”
“By the way, she’s not your friend at all. She can’t stand the sight of you.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” she said, then repeated, emotionless. “How. Did. You. Know.”
“Remember the day Yanna dumped me? Good. That’s when it all started…”
* * *
I had to delay my trip to see Jovanna. I called Valiadis to find out how much time I had left. According to him, the next wave of the Trial wasn’t to begin for at least another two weeks. Which meant I had at least another month — provided the Trial participants hadn’t eliminated each other on their very first day in the game.
Kira was the reason I was behind schedule. The things that had seemed so simple and clear to me (indeed, what could be easier when you have the money, the names, a step-by-step project development plan and her experience in finance) had turned out to be not quite so clear for her.
She’d quit her job at the bank, renouncing the severance pay and signing a statement promising not to seek employment with the bank’s competition.
That day at my parents’ summer cottage, talking everything through had taken much longer than planned. In the evening, we’d left her son Cyril with my parents, bidden our goodbyes and went to my place where we’d sat up all night talking as I’d finished my story, then explained what was required from her and what was the actual purpose of the foundation.
I wouldn’t have said that Kira was convinced by all the fantastical details, but at least my earlier demonstration had eased some of her skepticism. She’d refrained from her habitual retorts and sarcasms. The story of my abduction, Khphor, the Senior Races and the Trial made her gasp and clutch at her heart. I even offered to introduce her to Ilindi who was the Rhoan representative on planet Earth, provided Ilindi agreed, but Kira refused to meet the alien point blank.
“I don’t think so,” she said firmly. “I’m scared.”
I approached the last page of my story with a heavy heart, not knowing how to explain to her my upcoming disappearance.
But she, with her powerful analytic mind, had already put two and two together. “So this Selection will take place in the future? In the twenty-second century? How cool is that? And then the Diagnostics? Does that mean that you’ll be able to visit another planet and see it with your own eyes?”
“Yeah, sort of. I’ve already been on Pibellau,” I said with an inner chuckle, amazed at my lack of enthusiasm.
“Phily, you’re the luckiest person I know! And your abilities! Do you realize you’ve made the dream of every male on Earth come true? You can become invisible, dammit!”
In reply to all her enthusing, I couldn’t find anything better to do than to shrug and nod. She wanted to add something when a new thought struck her,
“Will you be coming back?” she asked in a soft, scared voice.
I shook my head. She turned her face away. I glimpsed her eyes welling with tears.
”Kira, I can’t refuse. Think for yourself: would you have refused something like this? Apart from you, Mom and Dad, there’s nothing that keeps me here. I haven’t got family here, and as for friends… okay, I’ve made some now but I’ll feel much better knowing you’re taking good care of them.”
“I understand,” she said softly. She turned to me, grabbed my head and kissed me on the forehead.
She drew me toward her and stroked my back for a long time without saying anything. She didn’t sob but I felt her tears drench my T-shirt.
Once she’d calmed down, she pulled herself together and got down to business as was her way, forcing all the emotional stuff from her head. I pulled out my notes regarding all the scientific and business projects based on my very first presentation for my future Great Job co-workers. Prospecting, pharmaceuticals, scientific research, investing in revolutionary technologies, augmented-reality projects, a talent scout agency, a sports boarding school…
Having studied it all, Kira asked me a number of clarifying questions, then concluded,
“The sheer scale of the project is impressive, but had it ever occurred to you that I might not be able to pull it off on my own?”
“Not on your own, Kira! Definitely not! Look: Gary Grant will help you to run the foundation. Next. If we take the sports boarding school, for instance, what better person to run it than Alexander Tereschenko from St. Petersburg? And what better place than this empty plot of land over in Rostov? I’d already checked out the city officials’ attitude toward a potential sports school. They’ll go along with it. Here’s a list of the most talented children in various sports, as well as the most suitable candidatures of the coaches depending on the children’s age. All you’ll have to do is speak to Tereschenko and provide him with financing. The rest he’ll do himself. He’ll poach the coaches, speak to the children’s parents and get busy building.”
“You’ve any idea what figures we’re talking? This isn’t just a sports school! What about all these science labs, the arts academy and…”
“These are all non-profit projects, Kira, although I’m sure that one day they might start paying for themselves. In ten years’ time, your first footballers will graduate and be bought up by some of Europe’s biggest clubs. Each kid on the list has the potential to become one of the top one hundred in the world, if not the new Messi. At the very least, they’re guaranteed to make the Russian national team.”
She heaved a sigh. “This I understand. I’ll just bite the bullet and do it. I’m sure I can… maybe.”
“I know you can. According to my notes, in the mid-2020s your scientific group will come up with an effective cancer cure without any side effects. Here’s a detailed list of things you’ll need to do in order to not just monetize it but make it available and affordable to everyone. Here, look: in the 2030s, you’ll have an opportunity to develop an Aspirin-like pill which will grant temporary immunity to the majority of now-terminal conditions. Its action is simple: the pill will teach the body a more efficient way of using its own immune system to combat any infections and viruses, destroying them at the moment of actual contamination. And all you need to do in order for this to happen, is get six people together in a lab and provide it with some financing. The probability of their accepting your offer is almost a 100%.”
I glanced through the list of talented children until I came to the few names I’d ticked off. “Look. These names are especially important. For instance, in another fifteen years’ time, this boy is going to invent a tricorder. Do you know what it is? It’s a portable machine which can evaluate a person’s physical condition in real time. It can provide an accurate diagnosis without the need for any heavy apparatus and medical tests. Tell me that’s not cool!”
“It is,” she agreed.
She seemed to mean it. It was as if she’d only just begun to realize the whole scale of my plan.
“You bet. I’d like you to take him and others like him under your wing. I need your foundation to find an excuse to pay for their education or something like that. Before they graduate, you can already engage them in research.”
“Children I can do. But all this means more long-term investments. How do you want me to finance all these non-profits?”
“You have almost half a billion at your disposal. Here’s a memory stick. On it you’ll find all the information you need regarding the buying and selling of stocks: the company names, the right amounts, everything. It’s all in code. The password is the combined birthday dates of Dad, Mom, you and myself with no spaces. This is valid until the end of next year. Trying to predict any further might cause mistakes because there’re too many unknown variables involved. The forecast’s accuracy will start dropping already after the New Year, albeit negligibly, so you’d better use the time left to your full advantage to accrue as much capital as possible.”
