‘Instruct me… Father.’
An icy presence caused her to open her eyes. In her schizophrenic delirium, she saw a mud brown mist envelop her, dwarfing her as it took shape.
Crimson red eyes.
Demonic ears, tapered back like a bat.
A muscular four-limbed torso, its bulk gyrating around her within the haze.
The devilish beast seemed to be inhaling her scent, its cold tongue lashing out to taste her flesh.
Delta waves took over, tugging Lilith toward unconsciousness as the demon’s rancid breath exhaled excrement into her feverish dementia.
I will guide you, Lilith.
I will lead you to Xibalba…
26
The Space Shuttle is the most effective device known for destroying dollar bills.
8:56 a.m.
The black stretch limousine is waiting for him outside the practice facility.
Samuel Agler takes a quick look around. Seeing no members of the media, he tosses his bag over his shoulder and jogs across the street, climbing in the backseat of the vehicle – failing to notice the maroon Chevy Corvette L-9 coupe parked at the end of the block.
Lauren Beckmeyer is in the cockpit of the slick roadster, watching as the limousine pulls into traffic. ‘Family emergency, my ass. Let’s see where you’re really going… and with whom!’
She activates the power switch, sending the sports car’s massive hydrogen fuel cells growling to life.
‘So, where are we headed?’ Sam glances at his mother, who is wearing a loose-fitting cream-colored bodysuit, made of the latest breathable fabric.
‘Cape Canaveral.’
‘GOLDEN FLEECE?’ A chill races down his spine. ‘Is this really necessary?’
‘For security purposes, yes.’
Up front, Mitchell Kurtz finishes programming the limo’s onboard navigation system, then adjusts his seat to a reclined position and closes his eyes. Ryan Beck is in the passenger seat beside him, engrossed in a game of Situational Combat Training-Level 4.
Kurtz opens his eyes. ‘Hey, Pep, I need my beauty sleep.’
‘Nag, nag.’ Without missing a beat, Beck reaches out a muscular arm, activating a soundproof barrier that sections off the front cab of the limo.
Like all cars approved for America’s new supersmart highways, the limousine is equipped with an autodriver, part of a ‘telematics program’ featuring navigational sensors embedded in the roadway, linked through Global Positioning Satellites. Designed and approved in 2017, with the first million miles on-line by 2019, America’s new computerized highways regulate traffic patterns and speeds, prevent accidents, and reduce crime rates by giving law enforcement officials the ability to override any suspect or stolen vehicle traveling on their interstate. With infants being tagged at birth with microchips, kidnapping became a thing of the past, the ‘crime net’ able to locate a missing child instantly while overriding the kidnapper’s vehicle.
By fall of 2023, all registered vehicles had been required to have hydrogen fuel cells and autodrivers on board, the technologies hailed as the ultimate solution for congested roads, the disturbing rise in vehicular accidents involving alcohol and drugs, and America’s dependence on OPEC.
The limousine pulls onto the northbound ramp of SH-95, the autodriver directing the vehicle to the far left lane before accelerating to 130 mph. Lane speeds are determined by pre-reserved destinations and current traffic density.
Traveling in a non-rush hour time slot, the 210-mile journey to Cape Canaveral will take ninety-six minutes.
Dominique turns to her son, attempting to ease tensions. ‘How was yesterday’s practice?’
‘I’m not really in the mood to talk.’
She shoots him a hurt look, then reaches under the seat for her sensory-deprivation headpiece. Positioning the visor over her eyes and ears, she activates the program. Classical music replaces the limo’s hum, her consciousness instantly transported to an azure lagoon surrounded by a lush tropical jungle. A cool breeze stirs the palm fronds. Dominique climbs onto a foam cushion, lies back, and floats.
Sam stares at her face, watching his mother’s stress lines wash away.
While virtual reality has replaced all other forms of entertainment, many critics claimed the devices were more addictive than heroin. New shutdown safety features were now required after hundreds of VR bangers had literally starved themselves to death while using the machines.
Sam activates the recline button of his own slumber chair and closes his eyes, thinking about Lauren – unaware that his fiancee is following him, less than ten car lengths behind.
Situated on 140,000 acres of wildlife refuge, located northeast of Cocoa Beach, Florida, are the two barrier islands housing America’s gateways to space.
The smaller barrier island east of the Banana River, bordering the Atlantic Ocean is Cape Canaveral, former home of the Cape Canaveral Air Station and its unmanned launches. Just west of the Cape is Merritt Island, situated between the Banana and Indian Rivers. This larger land mass belongs to the Kennedy Space Center (KSC), which includes the facilities of NASA and her sister organization, 3M-P (Manned Mission to Mars Project).
The origins of KSC and America’s space program can be traced back to the first Cold War, when the conflicting ideologies of the United States and the Soviet Union blossomed into a full-fledged race into space. In an attempt to keep pace with the Russians, America formed the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), ordering the Department of Defense and other ‘rival’ national organizations to step up their own research in the fields of rocketry and the upper atmospheric sciences. Unfortunately, the lack of a unified program and the typical in-house bickering among the Armed Forces combined to severely hamper the nation’s progress toward achieving their number one goaclass="underline" human spaceflight.
America would receive its wake-up call on October 4, 1957, when the Soviet Union successfully launched Sputnik 1. Responding to a race the United States was clearly losing, President Dwight D. Eisenhower created the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. NASA would take control of space away from the Armed Forces and absorb all existing research centers.
NASA began by focusing the bulk of its hundred-million-dollar annual budget on Project Mercury-a series of launches and experiments designed to evaluate whether humans could survive in orbit. Thirty-one months later, Alan Shepard Jr. became the first American to fly into space. Mercury’s success led to the Gemini Project, an extension of the human spaceflight program that utilized a spacecraft built for two astronauts.
President John F. Kennedy recommitted the nation to space in 1961 by announcing his goal to land a man on the moon and bring him back safely before the end of the decade. It was a specific goal-exactly what NASA needed, giving birth to Project Apollo. On July 20, 1969, eight years, eleven missions, and $25.4 billion dollars later, astronaut Neil Armstrong uttered his famous words, ‘That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.’
Mankind would take a giant leap backward in 1967, when politics once more interfered with science.
The Outer Space Treaty was a document initiated, negotiated, and rammed through Congress by a group of National Security and State Department officials whose only desire was to use fear to shut down the space program so that monies could be redirected to the Vietnam War. Within four short years, space funding had dropped a crippling 45 percent.
Had this not occurred, the momentum of the Apollo program might have led to the establishment of a moon base in the 1980s and a Mars colony before the year 2010, uniting the global superpowers, preventing the nuclear war of 2012.