The Lancaster Rule - The Lancaster Trilogy Vol. I Read online

  My mind shut down. I had no coherent thoughts, no memory of words or speech—of self. I just lay there, listening to my breathing until it deafened me.

  And then I screamed.

  Chapter 2

  Quin Aguilar’s first thought had been elation mixed with anxiety. Waving his arms, he spread his hands, explaining to Josie how she’d been found, buried deep in what was once a basement cellar in an old farmhouse on Prince Edward Island.

  Contractors had been clearing the grounds, to make way for an additional wing to the super-structure defense outpost in the Atlantic Basin, when he and Madge’s government contact called to say they had uncovered a stasis pod. Their presence was requested urgently to assist in its removal.

  “Another one!” Quin exclaimed, retelling the events. “But I’d been thinking how it’s been nearly ten years since the last one we found. I thought for sure all were found.”

  “Prince Edward Island. That would…would’ve been my brother’s house.” Josie’s weak voice rasped as she spoke slowly. Her eyes stared off into the distance as if trying to link the events of her life together. “But how did I end up there?”

  Quin jerked his bony shoulders high and glanced at his wife. Madge, a specialist in resuscitating stasis survivors, complemented him in every way. She was his rock, his foundation. Like him, she was a pod hunter. They were both retired now. Quin had started out as a geneticist, and had studied in detail the obscure research and published works of Dr. Peter Bettencourt and Dr. Walter Otoo, leaders in stasis technology and genetic science. To have found Bettencourt’s daughter was like finding the mothership.

  “Perhaps you were sent there for safekeeping?” Quin twisted his face in thought. He wished he knew more of Bettencourt’s history, but the geneticist’s work, though known, was overshadowed by Otoo’s.

  “So what’s a pod hunter?”

  Josie had a tendency to flit from one thought to the next with seemingly random regularity, but Quin knew how the mind of an artist worked; after all, being a scientist was akin to artistry. Eventually she would piece together all the loose bits of information to get the big picture. And since she had no understanding of what happened in the last three hundred years, he felt it his duty to explain what being a pod hunter was. To explain everything.

  “Well, over the last fifty years stasis pods became popular with groups calling themselves the Retro Movement.” Quin wriggled in his seat to get comfortable. Josie showed no signs of grasping his meaning. “The world…let’s say it had a drastic shift in government. The tide was changing. It became a totalitarian-ruled world. Fear and oppression—everywhere. Everyday was a nightmare to live through, and before the Lancaster’s, I remember many days just living in hiding, my mother terrified to even go outside to the shops. All technology was halted, monitored, or censored. It was a shock since the world, since you were born, had advanced so far. Now it was dead in the water. The dark ages once more.”

  “How old were you?” Josie asked.

  “About nine or ten,” Quin chuckled. “Long, long time ago. It’s not so bad now. The tyranny is pretty much ended.”

  “How bad was it?”

  “Pretty bad. Dane Lancaster was just starting to emerge, like a hungry alpha wolf, challenging everyone, every country. He succeeded too, declaring himself World President. It wasn’t too hard, really. We’d made a mess of the world since you were last here, Josie. There were catastrophic economic crashes all over, conflicts, disease, water shortages, and environmental disasters, not to mention natural ones. Like a chain reaction they came, one after the next. Anyway, to reinforce his law, Lancaster brought back the old moral codes. It was kind of a relief, actually, to look up to someone who had some sense of control, authority. It almost seemed like Lancaster was our savior. But then…then it started. He showed his true colors, and condemned anyone who didn’t comply to death. Agitators were silenced, education was government-controlled, media censored. World President of the United Europe and Americas, Dane Lancaster saw to that. He was sadistic, corrupt, his leadership self-styled. He was also erratic. Unpredictable. The world had gone from disaster to nightmare. It was better to just live scared and not say a word. Live like sheep. He was crazy. We lived this way for many, many years—more than thirty years, at least. And then his son, Baird, took over. It got better, a little bit. Either that, or we’d just gotten so used to living on the edge, of constantly looking over our shoulders, minding our manners and keeping our heads down and just…surviving.”

  Madge leaned in, running her comforting hands over his shoulders. She smiled and carried on for him. “Under Baird’s reign, technology and peace slowly came back, and the segregated world made attempts to unite again. It’s been fifty-five years since Dane first come to power. His grandson John rules as World President now. John is touted as the New Age leader—the Young Innovator. We shall see.”

  “John Lancaster. Yes.” Quin wagged a finger, then brought it to his chin and tapped it. “Now he’s causing quite a stir. Changing five decades of tight conditioning and fear, creating new ones of his own. You’ll see his popularity famed and frowned upon, praised and despised. No one has a clear idea of his agenda. But believe me, after all these years of Lancaster rule, no one’s going to dare question or oppose. I think we’re all choosing instead to watch fearfully from the sidelines to see what this new Lancaster does next.”

  Quin took a sip of the chamomile tea Madge had brought in earlier. “But getting back to history. Not all remained quiet, or silenced. Some were aggressive and deadly in their opposition to the Lancasters. Others kept silent, determined, and forever conspiring. During Dane’s time the Retro Movement was a pacifist group, and they banded together, voicing their displeasure and opposition to the ruling government. They decided to enter stasis pods. Stasis technology is mainstream now and is used, as it should be, as a medical aid. The Retro’s…they insisted their day would come when the world was once more at peace. For the first twenty years, most pods discovered—and there were thousands of them—were destroyed on the spot. It was barbaric. The sleeping occupants branded and convicted as cowards before their execution. This was how mad Dane Lancaster was. The sleepers, they never stood a chance.”

  Josie widened her eyes. “Not even a trial? They didn’t even try to wake them?”

  Quin shook his head, shame heating his face. He hated this part of history. It pained him. So many innocent lives, lost. What would future generations think? “But, it got a little better. By the time Baird Lancaster ruled, the remaining pods were long forgotten, scattered as they were throughout the world in safe houses, waiting for the arrival of a better world.”

  “And,” Quin clapped once and forced a smile. “A better world did come, with Baird. He terminated the law that branded pod survivors criminals and eventually, quietly, signed off on establishing rehab centers for the survivors. Some sleepers had family or friends able to resuscitate them. Others, the ones that were forgotten or lost, needed the most help. But with so many being reawakened, eventually survivor rehabilitation organizations had to expand and form re-assimilation programs. But we also had to find them. The missing ones. People like Madge and me; our work brought us together. We’ve dedicated our lives to the search and rescue of these survivors. I remember one of my first rescues, a young man from Tokyo. He was actually the oldest known pod survivor, at least fifty-two years old. We found him fifteen years ago. He told us he entered his pod the moment he sensed trouble. He’s now fully assimilated into the modern world. Works as a technical advisor for a film company. Very prominent, too.”

  Quin let the image of the young Japanese man play out in his memory. Those were the days when finding a survivor was like striking gold. The thrill of the find, the adventure in the seeking, the challenge in the rehabilitation.

  With Madge at his side, Quin helped well over a hundred survivors rehabilitate in the previous thirty years, some in secret and others publicly. But mostly theirs was a work best kept quiet. It wa
s a dirty and shameful part of history that caused people to shelter in pods, to hide and cower. The majority of people, conditioned by Lancaster-thinking, didn’t want to know, or even care, whom these individuals were who chose to hide rather than live. The sleepers were considered outcasts, filthy. Abominations. Quin and Madge’s work, while rewarding, also brought unspeakable dangers from fanatic groups who opposed the use of pods. Who opposed pod sleepers. Who opposed just about everything.

  Each pod carried the identity and a brief history of its inhabitant, making identification possible and easier. Surviving family members and friends, if there were any, could be contacted to help with the rehabilitation. The designs of the stasis pods were based on the research, writings, and prototype model of Dr. Walter Otoo, a West African scientist. Otoo, according to ancient history, had carried the baton after Dr. Peter Bettencourt was murdered, but Bettencourt’s signature on the model was prominent, from the replicated amniotic-fluid-based encasement liquid right down to the thermal reclamation suits the sleepers wore.

  The stasis pods had originally been designed solely as a medical aid and not as the fountain of youth numerous hungry corporations seemed hell-bent on getting their hands on. Bettencourt’s mysterious and unsolved death in 2033, the day after the publication of his works, sparked rampant rumors that it had been a government-sanctioned hit in an attempt to silence him. Others suggested it was a private-sector hit. Whatever the case or reason behind his death, Bettencourt was dead, but silenced he was not. Otoo, widely popular, well-connected and aggressively brilliant, took it a step further by finishing the prototype with a few alterations and enhancements. Then he used it to perform the first ever in-vitro conjoined twin separation while the mother and fetuses lay sleeping over the course of one year, slowly healing. When they were awakened, the mother went on to complete her full term of pregnancy, and gave birth to healthy twins.

  When the dust-covered suspension chamber was unearthed from the dark, damp cellar in Prince Edward Island, it was oddly large and more cumbersome than Quin was used to seeing. He realized immediately something wasn’t quite right with it. Inside the tempered glass lay a haunting sight. A sleeping beauty. Quin remembered how his heart nearly stopped when he took in the floating form of Josie.

  She lay there like a sea creature that lives in the deepest caverns of the underworld. Her nails had grown long through the ages, curled inward like obscene tentacles, soft and rubbery from centuries in liquid. Her dark hair had also grown long; it billowed, fanning about her body like a spectral sea-fern shroud. Her body was frail and slack, floating in the thick amniotic fluid. She was so ghastly thin, even her once form-fitting medical suit hung like a limp sail. The only sign of life was the low hum the pod emitted, like a chest freezer in the corner of a kitchen, and once every hour the sucking sound of the respirator pumping oxygen in once, and then out.

  When Quin realized his discovery wasn’t merely decades old but centuries, his initial reaction was near hysteria. Impossible! Simply impossible. No one could ever survive for so long. Could someone asleep for so long survive?

  “I consulted with Madge immediately. She worried that resuscitating someone who’d been sleeping for so long might cause more damage than good. From all appearances, it didn’t look as if you could survive for much longer anyway. Your body was already wasting away from the long years. Maybe, if it didn’t work, it would be better to let you die quietly. But if it did work, we owed it to Peter Bettencourt to try. After all, Dr. Bettencourt was the founding father of stasis pod technology. It was from his genius, or his curse, we were pod hunters in the first place. You were his proof that his tech was worth it.”

  Secreted away in a special encasement at the side of the chamber were the recordings of Dr. Bettencourt. Aside from the precise and detailed instructions on how to resuscitate his daughter, there were old discs and thumb drives of images and home movie clips of the Bettencourt family. Snapshots and scenes of memorabilia that made up the story of a family, a life, and living, long centuries ago.

  “We had to try.” Quin stared at Josie. She seemed engrossed in his recount of the events so far. He reached out and gently gripped her hand. “And if it failed, we would still have the recordings as proof that you once lived. But no one could know of what we did. We logged our report and finding, and treated you as a normal pod survivor. If word got out that a three-hundred-year-old pod survivor lay in our clinic…” Quin let out a nervous chuckle. “Well, all hell would break loose.”

  Chapter 3

  A few days later, my voice was finally strong enough to form sentences, and my tongue cooperated to the task. The warm honey teas helped as well. I asked to see my fathers’ recording again. After an initial hesitation, Madge placed the smooth oval imager into my palm. To put less strain on my recovering vocal chords, she disabled the voice command options and showed me which button to press to release the holograph, how to use the touch-sensitive projection to access the menu page, and how to pull up the function icons. Before leaving, she warned she’d be back in one hour.

  After an hour and a half, I set down the imager and closed my eyes to replay everything again in my head. It came back to me in graphic detail, helped along by what Quin had said and the new information my father supplied in his confession. Details and images that happened mere moments ago in my mind, when in reality…

  Dad hadn’t known precisely who was after him. The lines had blurred, whether government or private sector, or some sinister shade in between. But they had wanted his schematics for the stasis pod. When he realized the threat was imminent, and his research and work in danger of being taken away from him by any means necessary unless he cooperated, he staged an elaborate plan to save me. And in a way, it was a testament that his research did in fact work.

  From his confession I discovered that, unknown to me, my life was already threatened. A woman I had thought of as friendly and cheery, who, like me, went regularly to the corner coffeehouse, was in fact more sinister than she made herself out to be. She’d been sending weekly updates to my father, with candid shots of me going about my daily routine, along with a reminder that should my father refuse to cooperate, she could choose any number of scenarios of how I’d be terminated.

  The thought made me shudder. Such sinister intents from someone so beguilingly charming. What could I do about it now? A small part of me wryly considered the irony of it all. She was long dead, and I was still alive. Take that, bitch!

  Besides his research partners, I was the only other person he’d confided to, and it was no secret since I was always hanging out at his lab. With Peru already dead months ago, the only hold on Dad now was me. My brother Kellan was far away on PEI, and not even remotely associated, so it was a risk my father would have to take. He could only save one. The less Kellan knew, the better. To choose which child to save must’ve eaten Dad alive. I understood completely the dilemma Dad must’ve faced. In that instant, I forgave him.

  So, by convincing me to put my life on hold for a couple of months, he helped me prepare for the time in hibernation, as he used to call it. Having done so already merely as a laugh on my part, and also to help my father with his earlier experiments, I knew the procedures. I wasn’t a scientist but, having lived all my life with one, I knew enough to know I was playing with fire, especially with suspended animation research still so young and new. To me, it was very simple. My father needed help, and I was there to give it. Thinking back, I’d do it all again if I had to. He was my father, and I would do anything to help him reach the next step in the name of science. And because my father knew me, if I’d known his life was in danger, he knew I would insist he stepped into the chamber instead. I saw his logic now. Why he’d lied to save me.

  As I climbed into the suspension chamber, I remembered giving my father a wink, our code for “see you later.” I had no idea it would be the last time I’d ever see him alive.

  For three centuries, I slept.

  Three hundred fucking years!
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  I’d drifted away in a dream-world abyss where time and reality were nothing but a blink. One minute I said goodbye to Dad, the next I woke to a madness of incomprehension.

  All those long, quiet years, alone in a dark, dank cellar with nothing but a machine to breathe for me, feed me intravenously the precious nutrients I needed to sustain myself, and an uncomfortable catheter to reclaim and recycle my waste. My father, Dr. Peter Bettencourt, thought of everything—everything to make sure his daughter survived for as long as necessary to keep her alive.

  Why didn’t Dad tell someone where I was? Why was I left for three hundred years? Surely my brother knew—

  “I was in his fucking cellar,” I muttered aloud and huffed. I must be getting stronger, my fluency with swearing had returned. I looked around, making sure Madge hadn’t heard. She didn’t strike me as the type to condone cursing.

  My brother could’ve woken me. He would’ve figured out how to; it wasn’t rocket science. So why hadn’t he? Unless he was killed, along with his entire family? A sharp grip of grief and a sudden hate clutched my heart. Knowing someone was long gone and dead was one thing, but to think they were killed—murdered—was another matter.

  I couldn’t begin to sort my feelings out. Horror, hatred, rage. A multitude of confused emotions careened about inside me, seesawing rapidly with depression, grief and anguish.

  What do I do now?

  I wanted to die. Kill myself. The immediate answer. End the madness.