Mars Needs Books!. Gary Lovisi

been only thirteen when she’d first met him but he had not left her thoughts and her dreams since then. She often wondered about him. How was he getting on?

      The last contact she’d had with Ryan was when she’d seen to it that an old paperback book had been delivered to him. She wondered what he thought of it. She wondered what his new programming would make of him now. His old personality was gone. Now he was a new person with new memories and programming. A totally different person from the man she had sent for to do some sensitive body disposal work years ago. Nevertheless, he was still a DOC agent even if his memories had been all erased and replaced with new ones. As a DOC agent he must have been brain wiped on many occasions. Now his mind was full of made-up memories and new personality traits. Now he collected and read old hard-boiled crime paperbacks. Obsessively. It was quite ridiculous on the face of it, and Arabella Rashid laughed almost cruelly, but it was an important part of her plan. Meanwhile, poor Ryan’s memories of her and DOC, and the death and disappearance of Simon, were all gone now. Erased forever.

      Arabella Rashid smiled. Ryan was an agent of the DOC, like she had been. Still was, in fact. He was not as high up in the hierarchy as she was certainly, but she realized, everyone these days was an agent of DOC in some way. She wondered where Ryan was now. What was he doing?

      She wondered where he had come from, what he had done in his long career for the DOC? It must have been many terrible things. Now Ryan’s new implanted programs were all in, and according to her plan they would kick in on the long trip out to Mars. But Ryan wouldn’t be going to Mars for a year yet. In the meantime, she’d had him placed in the general DOC special agent assignment pool. He would be given jobs like any other DOC agent. And he’d perform them like a DOC agent was supposed to perform them. With ruthless efficiency. Doing just as he was told.

      Arabella Rashid’s mind kept coming back to that old science fiction paperback. It was with Ryan now, or it would be with him soon. She had given express orders he was to have it on his next assignment and that it was to follow him and be his personal property until he was placed on the ship to Mars. Then it would be taken away from him and on the long trip out to the Red Planet, his new programming would kick in—and he’d become a reader and collector of mystery and crime paperbacks.

      She smiled, wondering what Ryan would make of it all, had he but known. But of course, he wouldn’t know. He wouldn’t know anything. No matter that his brain had been wiped and re-implanted, Ryan was still an intelligent man. He’d surmise something was up once he saw that book. He wouldn’t remember it, of course, nor anything else concerning Arabella Rashid or Simon, but he’d be very curious. The old science fiction paperback would spark his consciousness, he would know that it meant...something.

      But what?

      She wanted to give him that hint, just to keep him thinking.

      The new Director of the Department of Control read the secret files about the progress of the cloned children of the Janus Project. It told about each clone and who it was based upon—Adolf Hitler, Idi Amin, Jeffery Dalmer, John Wayne Gacy—the list was endless and ever more horrendous. She read the “Biographies” and “Accomplishments” sections of the host subjects and was truly appalled by one after the other, as atrocity piled upon atrocity.

      She signed sadly, “These people aren’t even human beings. They really are something else, something non-human. Simply monsters, each and every one of them, and they shall never see the light of day.”

      When she came to the next to last subject, a large “X” had been overprinted. Here it was noted that the host DNA was supposed to have come from Simon himself. Arabella Rashid smiled, and whispered, “Not this time, Simon. You may have saved enough of your DNA for this project in advance of your timely demise, but your clone will never live long enough to use it. You know what that big red “X” means?”

      Simon could not answer her, so she told him.

      “It means, the fetus was born dead. You see, Simon, I had one of your more amenable DOC scientists insert a deadly virus into the mixture. The fetus developed, but as it developed it was also dying and it was finally born dead. As you should have been.”

      Arabella Rashid turned up the screen, clicked on the next file. The name didn’t matter, the contributor of the DNA was listed as Napoleon Bonaparte. She smiled at that, Napoleon tempered with Mahatma Gandhi, Albert Einstein, Martin Luther King and Albert Schweitzer added to the mix would be beneficial, among with many others.

      She said, “Many years from now this one will drop his given name and take up the name Moses Sage. Then he will begin his real work. His work for the freedom and dignity of the human race—which will need him more than he can ever know.”

      Arabella Rashid then smiled as her thoughts turned to the man she had sent out to Mars. “Right, Ryan? You know it too. Someday, Ryan, we shall meet again and maybe the world will be a better place for us.”

      CHAPTER FIVE

      MEMORY CAN PLAY YOU

      Ryan was lying naked on the cold floor of a small cell-like room. Alone. Dark. Thinking.

      He didn’t know when it all began. He didn’t know when it would end. Or how it would end. In fact, he didn’t know much of anything at that point.

      Here’s what he did know.

      Something deep inside him told him all about it. There seemed to be some little voice inside his mind. It told him about how there’s always been this struggle in the world. It is between people, sometimes individuals. More often it is between groups, governments, political theories and ideologies, even sometimes crackpot ideas expounded by morons and maniacs. Seemingly with all of them at each other’s throats. In the end it is the individual who always turns up the loser. The little guy and gal cut down another inch. Made an inch shorter each day. They are pounded down into the ground, some of them sunk in so low they have no place else to go. Some of them down so low their eyes have to look up just to see level ground. Sometimes they think they’re looking up. In reality they’re just standing down deep in a ditch they know they’re never getting out of. Kind of like a grave.

      His thoughts told him that these days the individual is the biggest loser of them all. While any individual skilled enough to become self- sufficient has become the scariest person of all to the system. To the hated Authority who run everything and thus to the rumored DOC—The Department of Control. The DOC, that controls everyone and everything, though few even know of its existence. But those that truly understand the word fear, are terrified to hear that name even whispered.

      Even now Ryan wonders if it all really exists. The DOC? Some say it’s worldwide. Others say that it originally began as a way to monitor the Internet or fight international Islamic terrorism after the attack on the old United States of America on September 11, 2001. Regardless, in no time it seemed the DOC was soon not only monitoring but controlling, and not only the Internet. It was soon influencing, then controlling our government, then foreign governments, and not soon after, damn near everything.

      Their hand was felt heaviest when they began rewriting history. They altered all texts and laws, changing everything online until no one knew anymore what the original facts had been. Most citizens didn’t care though, as long as they were given programs and government giveaways. A lot of it was mind-numbing, glitzy entertainment, bread-and-circus thrills. They were offered and accepted a vast wasteland of mindless entertainment: originally beginning on what had been called “television” far back in the early days, then on the Net, later with live inputs plugged directly into the brainpan. They infected the minds of millions of these “wireheads” with powerful subconscious suggestions and propaganda protocols that controlled their actions and thoughts. It was all crap to deaden the mind, making them pliant and obedient. Head slots for disks became conduits for instant downloading of mindless music, sex and violence, so-called “entertainments,” that went directly into the brain. The young especially loved it and were especially vulnerable. They were encouraged in school and at public events to form “group link-ups” when each had a direct brain-link input slot in their neck. Then they could all be on the same program. Literally. Of course everything was heavily dosed with Gov-prop lies, sly distortions,