Mars Needs Books!. Gary Lovisi

direction. Their minds and thoughts bent with purposeful design to your every want and desire.”

      There was immediate and resounding applause from the Board members. They liked what they were hearing.

      Arabella Rashid smiled glowingly at them all. Yet inwardly, she shuddered and prayed that none of them would ever suspect the deadly dangerous game she was playing.

      For it was well known by those in the know, the Janus Project would create a group of the worst monsters culled from human history. Artificially bred and created, with memory and obedience implants. These clones of the most dangerous people who ever existed, were set to change human history forever. They were just what the DOC wanted, just what the hated Authority needed to further tighten its grip on everything human. An army of truly murderous monsters without one scintilla of humanity to stay their hands.

      Arabella Rashid clicked off her view screen and sat back comfortably in Simon’s old chair. Her feet were perched upon the console in front of her as she picked up the old science fiction paperback she had taken away from James Ryan days before. She sighed, thinking of him again. He would be on his way to Mars soon, with a cargo of a few hundred men who would become new settlers. They would be miners, many would work themselves to death in the mines. On the ship with them were crates of old paperback books. She smiled. What a cargo! Human reprobates and crime paperbacks. They did seem to go together. Ryan would never be able to figure it out. He would never even imagine such a plan, and whether he suspected he’d been tampered with or not, he’d perform as he’d been programmed. They would all perform as they had been programmed and that was all that mattered.

      The girl who now called herself Arabella Rashid looked at the garish cover art on Ryan’s paperback copy of Mars Needs Books. The spaceship and supermen motif was colorful and quaint. The sexy girl in very abbreviated outfit, was crass and exploitative, and the old paperback book she held was so....

      She just laughed now, remembering one of the characters had been named Arabella Rashid. She’d taken her name from that powerful young woman in the book. She’d seen a copy of the book long ago, years ago, maybe this was even the very same copy she’d seen back then? She looked at the old paperback carefully. The entire package was antique. Certainly obsolete as an information medium. For a second she thought she should do a search/scan for info on the author. The book was credited as written by someone named Philip K. Dickson. Perhaps a pseudonym or a play on words? She decided it did not matter. The author did not matter. Not now. What did catch her attention was the sentence printed in bold print at the top edge of the cover. These phrases she knew now had been called by the unlikely name of “blurbs,” back when actual hard copy books had still been published. Arabella Rashid was drawn to one sentence on the cover. It said, “The story of Moses Sage—the Superman who brought the promise of revolution and freedom to Earth and the spaceways....”

      “Moses Sage?”

      Arabella thought of the Janus Project. Now it seemed there might be even more to Janus than the DOC Board and even she knew about. Arabella Rashid’s secret part of the Janus Project—its other face—had been more two-faced than the ancient Roman god’s namesake could ever be imagined. Instead of the clones being implanted with the DNA from the minds of monsters—she had managed for one replicant to be implanted with all the forbidden data of the saints and heroes. That one single replicant was now to be called Moses Sage. His mind would contain the DNA combinations from the minds of the best men and women in human history. Including some of the greatest military leaders and strategists of all time to ensure the success of the revolution.

      Meanwhile, next to him in the vats, dozens of monster clones would continue to grow and evolve, but they had already secretly been infected with a timed self-destruct virus. Those Janus clones would all mysteriously die upon the attainment of their twentieth birthday. All but one. All except Moses Sage. But he will be gone and in hiding long before his sibling clones began their death dances.

      “You will grow into manhood unfettered by the world to learn and develop into a great leader. Then, decades from now, when all is ready, you will take the name Moses Sage and lead the underground and its revolution against the Authority and the DOC,” she said, gently putting down Ryan’s old paperback.

      Arabella Rashid knew she had planned well but it was a complicated plan. It was a long plan of many years duration and anything could go wrong at any time. She had just passed her thirteenth birthday. She would be a woman well in her thirties once Moses Sage presented himself to the citizens of the world and began his revolution to free Earth of the DOC. Meanwhile, Ryan and his group of malcontent mining settlers would be gone from Earth and safe on Mars. Where for the time being, they would be reading paperbacks and dreaming of revolution.

      She smiled, the wheels were set in motion.

      Arabella Rashid picked up the old paperback from the console again, flipped the paper pages. “Mars Needs Books, indeed!” she said with a shake of her pretty head. “We’ll see where this all leads us, one day, James Ryan.”

      Then Arabella Rashid placed the book in a plain manila envelope, writing upon the outside of the envelope, “For James Ryan, Eyes Only!” and placed in gingerly in her outgoing mail slot for immediate delivery.

      CHAPTER FOUR

      THE YEARS DO PASS US BY

      For a thirteen-year-old genius girl-child, Arabella Rashid knew that the game she was playing was devious and deadly. But it was also fun. It was her way to change the world that Simon had built all around her since she had been a mere innocent. She hated that world, and she hated Simon. His death had been a true pleasure for her. It meant he would never hurt her or anyone else ever again. Death gave a certain insurance, a reassuring certitude for the living that such evil monsters would never get at another victim.

      But she still had the nightmares.

      Those never went away. Even when she had become a woman and understood it all. The little girl child deep inside her, was still terrified. That little girl, was always scared. But she was brave and strong and overcame all that life and Simon had thrown at her.

      The years passed, and Arabella Rashid grew into womanhood. She became a stunning young lady, but remained aloof and always guarded. She was guarded in her self and thoughts, and of course, literally, being guarded by the top security shock troops the DOC had to offer. And through it all, she never forgot Simon’s ill use of her. She never forgot all she had learned from him as well. She hated Simon and damned him to hell every day for what he had done to her and all the others. Yet even as she tried to fight against everything he represented she was fearful that she was becoming more and more like him every day.

      Relentlessly the years passed by. The old Earth flew around the old Sun, and Arabella Rashid thought sometimes of the man called James Ryan. Images of his rugged good looks flashed in her mind. She was saddened at what she had caused to be done to him. First had been the brain wipe, then the implanted memories and instructions. She wondered just what kind of a new man he had become. James Ryan had been a DOC special agent, as cold-blooded and ruthlessly efficient as any the Department of Control and Simon had created in their early clone program. Much like that little girl, who had become Arabella Rashid.

      There had been war at the DOC in the days before she had killed Simon. All of Simon’s various early creations having grown up, educated by Simon and the DOC, becoming nice little monsters. So ambitious. So ruthless. They had fought each other behind the scenes in a long clandestine war, teens and pre-teens in a dirty high-tech Lord of the Flies battle for survival—and Simon’s favor—which was after all, the very same thing back then.

      Those had been hard days. Arabella Rashid remembered them now with a shudder. These more modern days were different, colder still, after all hope for her was long gone. However the DOC was still unaware of her actions. Though the Authority ruled all, she now realized it was...vulnerable.

      Even then she still kept James Ryan in her thoughts. She allowed herself a small smile of joy as her mind imagined his strong face and handsome form. Ryan was older than her by ten years. It was nothing like the age difference with Simon. Her thoughts of Simon caused her great anger but her thoughts of James caused her to smile—almost