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  Dark Energy makes up what appears to be about 68% of the energy of the universe, a constant across all of space. These forces are what is causing the universe to expand. So cosmologists believe.

  But what if some of this energy …

  … had intelligence?

  … could manipulate space and time?

  … has become depleted?

  … needs the energy from intelligent organisms to keep its forces from dying?

  … has come to planet Earth to harvest the energy from its humans?

  Indeed, this blood-dimmed tide of intelligence has attacked the Earth, consuming the innocent like a vampire that must have human blood to survive.

  There is no hope for most of the humans it takes. Except for a few. Those individuals who, because of some inherent inner strength, are able to resist its attacks. One such person is Conrad Brinkley. He is a software developer known as an Eureka in the company he works for because of his extraordinary ability to solve complex problems. But there is one problem he can’t solve: what exactly is happening to him. For weeks his dreams are haunted by the face of a woman pleading for his help. It’s always the same dream. Every night. Now sleep has become his enemy. And this enemy wants to drive him insane.

  This is his story. It’s a coming of age tale, in a sense. For buried deep within his psyche is a super human warrior that this Dark Energy force unwittingly releases. But his journey is neither easy or without danger. Beside the threat of this intelligent force, as well as that coming from people who want to use his power for their own ends, he must confront forces within himself that could destroy him and those he seeks to protect.

  Book One: Brainstorm

  Book Two: The Inner World

  Book Three: Dark Energy

  The Blood-Dimmed Tide

  Book 1

  Brainstorm

  Jeff Siamon

  Brainstorm Copyright © 2018 by Jeff Siamon. All Rights Reserved.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

  Cover designed by the author

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  “The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

  The ceremony of innocence is drowned”

  The Second Coming ─ W.B. Yeats

  1

  Black like a cloudy night sky in the middle of nowhere. Everywhere and everything touched by its darkness. That blackness first the only sensation in his sleep. Until it began to undulate. Pulsate as if it were some living organism. Then became smaller. Like it was a being pulled through a tiny slit in his vision. Two slits, really. One on either side. But that wasn’t what would wake him from his sleep. As they grew smaller, the surrounding area became lighter and lighter. A burning lightness that hurt his head. But he couldn’t close his eyes on it. Or on the two masses of blackness that now were forming into spheres. And the smaller they became, the more they resembled eyes. Two dark eyes. So dark that there was no white around their pupils. They seemed to be floating somewhere in this brightness. At first, he would think they were animal eyes. When he could think because the brightness hurt his head. Some desert creature staring at him. For that is what the brightness became once the eyes took shape. A vast expanse of desert sands. Its heat shimmering and heaving as if it also were alive. Then, just before he would wake, the burning expanse of desert around the eyes would swirl into a shape. Not an animal shape. But a human one. The pale face of a woman. Her long hair as black as her eyes. Her lips black as well. Lips that had no smile. No frown. A corpse’s lips. Perhaps a corpse’s eyes. Only. As he stared at the face. As the brightness around the face burned his skin and he was ready to cry out in pain. The face, the eyes, the lips also began to pulsate. Like they were made out of some primordial jelly. They began to throb to the same rhythm of the desert sands. Speaking as they pulsated: “Help me. Please, help me.” It was the woman’s voice that would shock him into wakefulness. That, and the feeling ─ the certainty ─ that if he stared much longer, he, too, would turn into jelly. To become one with the girl’s face. And the desert sands.

  Always the same dream.

  He would wake up sometime in the middle of the night. Eyes wide open in his darkened room. His face burning. Like in his dream. So much so that there were tears in his eyes and pinprick bright floaters that he couldn’t blink away until he turned on his light.

  Crazy, he had thought, the first few times he had had the dream. He’d have to stop watching late night TV. At least that’s what Evie told him. But, of course, when he woke up ─ sat up suddenly as if to defend himself from his dream ─ he had woken her up as well. Once, he had even fallen off the bed, taking most of the covers with him. That might have been funny. Or at least deserved some wry comment before they remade the bed and tried to get back to sleep. But after three weeks of this, Evie had nothing wry to say about it. What she did say was, one more night like that, and he could move out. She was a nervous wreck from lack of sleep.

  One more night came. She gave him a week to find a place. She liked him. They had some good times together. But. Well. There was only so much a person could take. After all, they weren’t married. There was no “for better or worse” in their relationship. And besides the dreams, things hadn’t been going very well for them. Lately. Nothing definite. Just cold silences when there should have been small talk. Much too often.

  The dreams started about month ago. When he had thought about it ─ which at first he didn’t ─ he had to reject the late-night TV idea because all he and Evie ever watched before going to bed was some sitcom rerun. Then, digging deeper into the why, he put it down to that blow- ‘em up, burn- ‘em-up, shoot- ‘em-up movie they both had seen on her birthday. A combination of too much dinner wine at that restaurant across from the cinema and the movie. And maybe because he felt them too much ─ these gory scenes. Sometimes even closing his eyes. What a “woos” he would tell himself afterwards, even as he proclaimed to her when pressed how much he had enjoyed those violent movies. (That’s what men were supposed to say.) Oddly enough, she liked those kinds of movies rather than rom-coms.

  After a week, he couldn’t find a place downtown, close to work. So he moved in with Habib. He worked on Evie’s floor. Friends of both of them. But more Evie’s than his. Evie and Habib were on the same project together. Appliance AI apps. Robotics for the masses, they liked to joke.

  But thank goodness, he had found a place after a two-week hunt. Habib snored like a locomotive. Even including the occasional whistle when he blew out his breath. It was a condo. A studio rental from the owner. Just under four hundred square feet. Unfortunately, in the burbs. Which he hated. No favorite pub around the corner. Or a coffee house. He’d have to drive to one and sip his beer or coffee in some strip mall or plaza. Which he never did or would ever do.

  Worst of all, he hated the commute. It was on the subway line that ran under the river. (That’s why the place went for a ridiculous rent.) But he rarely took the subway. Never felt good being jammed in with all those morning and evening strangers. He could have taken the subway from Evie’s place. She did. But he always walked. Even if it meant ten blocks in the freezing rain or snow. So, after buying a used car he couldn’t afford, he drove to work most mornings. And that meant a long, slow drive because he had to cross the bridge. The War Memorial Bridge over the river. Built over a hundred years ago. Long before anyone from th
e city thought about moving to the other side. Now it’s three lanes of traffic (two going south in the morning and two the other way for the evening commute) were always choked to stand-stills. Even when it wasn’t rush hour.

  Then it finally came to him. The reason for his dream. (Other than the fact that he was a woos anytime he read or talked about scenes of violence.) A few days before it started, Mai Lin had committed suicide. She had worked with him and the rest of the team on RoboBiotics. That was the code name the company used to describe their latest venture into molecular, quantum computing. Very hush-hush since the competition was working on the same concepts. So hush-hush, the team worked on the twelfth floor, one floor above the senior management rooms. And they were the only ones on the floor. And you needed a special electronic key to get there on the elevator or up the stairwell.

  It was a shock. Mai Lin committing suicide. She was getting married that spring. Would talk of nothing else. Exchanging vows on a square-masted tall ship in Port-au-Prince. Then a two-week cruise. Afterwards, they would move in to the three-bedroom house she and her fiancé had purchased last Christmas. The deal was to close at the end of June. Just when they would have gotten back from their honeymoon.

  More than a shock because there was no reason for what she did. That’s what everyone had said, including her fiancé. You’re shocked if something happens that you might suspect but didn’t believe in. But Mai Lin and suicide? There was just no way putting the two together.

  No, that must’ve been the reason, he felt. She had jumped out of a window. Only a few minutes after she had come into the building. The team was having its weekly briefing session. She had looked a bit drawn. Even worried, some said. But that was understandable. Everybody was. A bit worried. There had been talk that the company was going to drop the project. Too airy-fairy. Too up in the sky. Considering that after fifteen months, they hadn’t come up with anything more productive than 100 or so gigs of code that could open and shut a rabbit’s eyes from a remote.

  They were all worried about their jobs. Because when the company cancelled a project, it also let everyone go who was on the project. Mai Lin and her fiancé had just bought that house. They needed both incomes to afford it.

  So, her worried face wasn’t any different than the faces of the other team members sitting around the conference room table. Including his. Jobs were scarce now. Even in the burgeoning robotics field. And then there was all the secrecy. If a company let you go, for whatever reason ─ or you quit ─ you couldn’t work for anyone in a competing business for a year. That was in all the hiring agreements. And right now, quantum computing and robotics coders were the only fields of software development companies were seeking. Everyone in the room had car payments, mortgages, rents, condo fees, lines of credit and revolving credit card balances.

  But no one but Mai Lin had committed suicide.

  She had turned white before the meeting had started. While everyone was either gabbing or going over their notes. She had shaken her head several times as if she were saying “no” to someone. Then she bolted out of her chair. That’s what Marlene had told everyone. She was the only one to see that. Everyone else was staring at their notes. (Each team member would give his or her report to the rest of the team. And these notes would be summarized by the team’s secretary and given to head office.) No one noticed her until she said she had to leave the room. But that wasn’t unusual. Nature calls or someone needs a refill on their coffee.

  With a collective smile, everyone went back to their notes or conversations to wait for her return. Then the meeting would begin.

  Of course, she never returned.

  After about twenty minutes, Marlene went to look for her. The bathroom was empty. So was her desk. She came back into the room and told that to the others. Everyone left the room and searched the floor. Called down to reception to see if she had left the building.

  It was crazy, everyone agreed. They suggested Hal do something.

  Hal was the team leader. Not much of a coder. A better talker than a coder. And also a cousin of the CEO. Brinkley was the best coder. (That was his name. Conrad Brinkley. Connie to his friends and colleagues.) All the higher ups knew that. They had even offered him the position of team leader. (Before Hal had come.) But he had turned it down. He was no leader. Just wanted to be left alone to do his work. Didn’t like looking over other people’s shoulders. Evie had given him hell for turning down the position. One of the few arguments they had ever had. (Other than his reoccurring nightmare.)

  Hal had phoned down to reception to see if she had left the building. The others went back to the conference room. Except Connie. He just sat at Mai Lin’s desk and felt puzzled. As if for some reason, he should know why she had left. And although he didn’t put it down to any prescient notion, he had suddenly gotten up and had gone to one of the windows. Only because, afterwards he had thought, it was open, letting in the cold, outside air. He meant to shut it. And he would have except that when he looked out, he saw a lemon-yellow figure lying twenty stories down. Half on the concrete walkway to the front of the building and the bare branches of the garden bushes alongside. Mai Lin’s dress was lemon yellow. Her favorite color.

  2

  Connie’s alarm was set to go off in three hours. He didn’t want to try for more sleep. (If he could get it.) Didn’t want to get up, either. But he did. He went into the bathroom ─ the only private room in his small space ─ and turned on the light. The glare hurt his eyes. He splashed cold water on them and looked into the mirror. At his haggard face and the dark patches circling his eyes.

  He didn’t know how much more he could take. Having this dream. Waking up in the middle of the night. Every night. It had gotten so he was afraid to go to sleep. Usually he passed out from exhaustion rather than actively trying to sleep. But he couldn’t give himself an ultimatum like Evie had done. He wished he could. Stop dreaming or get the hell out of here!

  Evie had pestered him to see someone. He had resisted. He didn’t want to bare his soul to some stranger. And besides, what could he tell the person that he hadn’t thought of himself? And as for the dark closets in his childhood. He didn’t think there were any. He had had a happy enough upbringing. His parents were loving and respectful of him and his sister. They all got together most Thanksgivings and Christmases. (His parents had retired to Florida and his sister and her family only lived a few hundred miles away.)

  He showered, shaved and dressed. Futile to comb his hair ─ that brown lock that always threatened to cover one eye. But he tried. Made breakfast and carafe of strong coffee. He turned the radio on while he ate. It was a local show. Inane music and dumb chatter. But that way, he could check on the weather and traffic. So far, the weather was okay. No rain in the forecast. (That inevitably caused accidents on the freeway and bridge.) And, of course, at three a.m., there was little traffic going into the city.

  He had thought of going in early and leaving early to avoid rush hour. After all, he was always up by two or three. And maybe that’s what he should do. Break the cycle of his daily routine.

  When he finished eating, he put his dirty dishes into the sink. On top of the other dirty dishes for that week. He had been depressed ever since he and Evie had broken up. And these nightmares hadn’t helped his moods. He had always been a somewhat organized, everything in their place type of person. Not overly so. Just enough to maintain order. Many coders were like that. Not so much in their dress, which was often haphazardly casual. But they had to have a head for systematic organization. That way, when something went wrong with their code ─ which it always did ─ they could tell by the fact that it didn’t fit into their system.

  But everything wasn’t in its place. Not since he had moved into his apartment. He couldn’t face cleaning up. He and Evie had always done that together. So on top of the dirty dishes in the sink (his dishwasher was empty), there was his laundry scattered around his Murphy bed. The overflowing trash bins under the sink and in the bathroom. The
unfinished or unread paperbacks snuggled beside a cushion on the couch.

  He moved to the other end of the kitchen table. That’s where his computer was. And the pages of printouts and notes he was working on. Work seemed to be the only thing that made him feel good. That didn’t seem to give him nightmares. At least there never had been a suggestion of coding or computing in his dream.

  What his team had been charged to develop was a way to externally manipulate body organs and systems. No easy task even with the advancements that had been made in BioRobotics and quantum computing. It had been his “aha!” inspiration that had enabled the team to control the bunny’s eyes. (Hal had taken the credit.) But blinking on command was a long way from cleaning out a blocked artery or repairing cells damaged by cancer.

  He woke the computer up. Glanced down at the note to himself he had made last night before pulling out the Murphy bed and preparing for sleep. What he had been working on was what the team called a DNA processor. A way to make a molecular chip that, when inserted into an organism, would be able to replicate DNA code from remote instructions. That was the first phase of the project. Next, they would have to find a way for the replicator to actually produce the DNA molecules.

  The team hadn’t gotten very far. He hadn’t gotten very far. Making the rabbit open and close its eyes was just a trick to impress the higher ups. Since there was talk of shutting down the team, evidently the trick hadn’t been very impressive.

  He made a few more notes to himself. Something he would try when he got into work. Then, alternately, he stared at his notes and at the computer screen. Waves crashing on a shore.

  It was Evie who had chosen the photo. He had never liked the water. Couldn’t swim. Didn’t like the photo but never admitted that to her or the fact that he couldn’t swim. Too embarrassed. Evie was not only a good swimmer, she sailed. Learned it as a kid on her father’s boat. An old B42 Hinckley. The one time she had taken him out sailing on her dad’s boat ─ in waves much like the ones in the photo ─ he had sweated anxiously the whole time. And had been seasick. He had just never gotten around to changing the photo. He guessed it was because it reminded him of Evie.