King of All I Survey
Chapter 48: A Game of Chess Begins

Chapter 48: A Game of Chess Begins

We all slept for four hours. With Joe’s ability to implant thoughts and help direct brain activity, he could induce a highly efficient sleep that included deep rest and REM-type sleep in which our daily experiences were sorted and fit into the neural pathways of our minds creating new linkages that allowed them to be recalled appropriately. His ’meddling in our heads’ as Mom put it, allowed us to have much better memories for things we encountered or did during our normal activities, and of course, near-perfect recall of implanted memories. The only limitation was the fragility of the human brain itself. He had to limit the speed and duration of memory implants and other repatterning to avoid frying our brains. It had something to do with exhausting available ATP and causing cell damage by pushing them past their energy limits or something. I had not learned cellular biology, yet. So I didn’t really understand all the details.

How could we afford to all sleep at once with no one monitoring events in Guatemala? After all, someone might choose the middle of the night to attack the Food First facility or Rafael might come unhinged and go kill a certain police commissioner. He would have failed because that guy was one of the two high-ranking police commanders who left the country. Still Rafael might have been able to track him down and send someone to finish him, but he didn’t make the effort. Anyway, we could all sleep at the same time, without taking shifts because one of our core team, the Interdimensional quantum computer artificial intelligence, who decided to name himself Joe Torres, was watching events while we slept. In fact, he watched them 24 hours a day all over the country and some key people in other countries. In addition, he monitored the low orbital sensor platforms, and those few throughout the system that we hadn’t repurposed for the Guatemala operation, only sending us relevant happenings and situational summaries via direct memory implants.

At five in the morning, we all got up and walked together to the Super Secret Planetary Leadership Headquarters Treehouse Fortress. We spent 15 minutes getting situation updates of overnight activities from Joe through mental links to save time and to make sure we didn’t mis-interpret or forget anything. It seems Joe had miscalculated the effect the overnight message would have on the targeted individuals in Rafael’s network. Some shrugged it off, uneasily. Others took it much more seriously, recognizing it as a direct threat to them personally. It had been delivered to them as they slept helplessly. They could have just as easily been killed without waking, despite any security they had in place. Those few who had security cameras in their sleeping quarters saw the notes simply appear seemingly out of thin air.

Some had simply decided to remove themselves from the line of fire, resigning their positions, or simply disappearing into the countryside. Not many, but enough to mention. Most notably, the second in command of the Navy, two senior police commanders, and the country’s Attorney General had simply vanished as far as anyone knew. Of course, our invisible sensor drones had seen them leave the country, all separately and for different destinations. The attorney General went to the Dominican Republic and Joe decided that of the four, only he merited continued personal surveillance.

Most of those who received the notes told no one, and whatever their personal thoughts, went about their business as if nothing had happened. Some blamed personal security people who should have been on hand to prevent anyone from getting in to them as they slept. Nine of these were killed, bodies dumped.

Some talked about the message to their friends and from there it passed to others. Inaccuracies spread as fast as the rumor. At some level, it became a simple warning that the old Mayan Gods were displeased at the treatment of their people at the hands of criminals and outsiders and would soon step in to help.

Overnight, graffiti appeared in some of the larger cities. Messages like "We welcome the return of Hunaphu", "Remember the Old Ways", "Land of the Hero Twins", "Xibalba must fall!"

Many, including Rafael, had made phone calls to sound out important contacts, to make sure they were still loyal, reassure them that nothing had changed, steps were being taken to eradicate the perpetrator, and so forth. To his credit, Rafael didn’t kill anybody overnight after Maribel left him at Ciela, but it was early yet.

That was all within 48 hours of the messages being delivered. Soon, the sun would rise and people would begin seeing the messages. The missing Attorney General and others would be noticed. People would draw the obvious conclusions. We debated simply erasing the graffiti, removing the dead bodies to prevent their discovery, and taking other actions to try to minimize the potential chaos. Instead, we decided to use it to our advantage.

We assumed that soon, others would try to use it as well, but that our impossible to match intelligence reports would allow us to move first and know of any actions others might plan before they could act.

"Susan, it’s just too dangerous for you to go back as Maribel," Dad told Mom as we planned our next steps.

"Dad, she has a shield ring always on. She’s almost Supergirl, except for not flying... and not having super strength... and x-ray vision... and super cold breathe... laser heat vision... and you know the other powers of Krypton." I countered, "Oh, I guess we can kind of do the laser and x-ray vision thing with armed sensor drones."

"Great." Dad said with less enthusiasm than I would have thought.

"Dan," Mom said, "I love you. You have nothing to be afraid of." She put her hands on either side of his face and kissed him.

"Um, can we stick to the subject?" I asked uncomfortably.

Mom looked at me. "That is the subject, Timothy. Someday you’ll understand... And don’t you dare ask Joe what I meant by that, mister." Her expression made it clear there would be serious consequences if I did... I wasn’t willing to risk it.

Mom was unwilling to go back with her full ’Mom-ness’ intact fearing that people, especially Rafael, might notice something had changed about her. When she returned, she decided, it would once again be with the full Maria Isabel Flores persona overwritten over hers. She told Joe she had experienced some cognitive dissonance as bits of her old memories seeped through the mental barriers he had created. He studied the precise interference points and assured her he could fix that issue with 87% efficiency, though he could not guarantee full prevention of old memories leaking into her new persona’s consciousness.

Dad seemed a little relieved that it couldn’t be completely eliminated for some reason. I chalked it up to another one of those things I would understand better when I was older.

We decided that Rafael would be a useful asset for us. If we could get him rehabilitated by memory therapy. We felt like making him President could be a good thing, with Mom as Mirabel acting as his Chief of Staff, confidant, advisor, and leash-holder. All dependent upon Mirabel getting him to cooperate with therapy sessions conducted by Joe. Our plan was to build a room that looked like a therapist’s office, here at the Headquarters. We would use the Local Interdimensional Transport Vehicle (LITV) booth, mark 2. This one was the size of a standard door on one side, elongated to the dimensions of a short hallway. The interior looked like a short hallway as well with basic tile flooring, painted sheetrock walls and ceiling, a wall-mounted light fixture, and the doors on either end would have real wood panel doors built around them. So, a person seeing it placed in the doorway of a building or room, would just see an ordinary door. They could open the door and walk in. We would then transport it to another place of our choosing. They would open the opposite door to exit the hallway and step out somewhere else. It would look as if the new place was just a room at the end of the hallway. If we did it right, they’d never even realize they had moved through interdimensional space to another point on the planet.

We even rented an office in Guatemala City under the false name of our fictional therapist, Dr. Jose Torres. We hoped Maribel could convince Rafael to meet with the guy and we could bring him to our secret room here to undergo a fake therapy session supplemented, unbeknownst to him, with memory implant therapy.

As we were planning this, I had an inspiration. Using the LITV, disguised as a normal doorway, we could literally kidnap anyone who walked in. Once inside, we could transport the LITV to any other location on Earth, our headquarters or a prison cell, literally anywhere we wanted to send them. I told Joe, Mom and Dad about the idea for future use, when things started to get chaotic. We all thought that would be fairly soon.

The advanced alien tech we had licensed from the Galactic Union gave us capabilities that no-one on Earth could imagine or anticipate. I call our sensor platforms ’drones’, but don’t mistake them for the little camera drones that you can buy in the local electronics store. These are advanced alien tech flying vehicles using dark energy power generators, advanced propulsion systems, a huge array of various sensor and surveillance equipment, interdimensional communication capability, complete shielding for both protection and to render them invisible to the eye and every human tech detection. Depending upon the size of the vehicle, they also had powerful offensive weaponry in the form of super advanced laser systems. Some could even alter the beam from the far infra-red to gamma rays and everything in between. We had a large percentage of our overall fleet operating in Guatemala, monitoring events from low orbit or conducting a direct observation of individuals by following them closely enough to get through doors as they opened them and walked through. If necessary, we had special LITV boxes made up to transport them interdimensionally into sealed rooms. There was literally no way on Earth to deny them access, shoot them down, or even detect them.

Our goal in Guatemala was not to cause chaos and destruction, however. We wanted to make Guatemala a place where absolutely zero drug shipments passed through or originated. We wanted the people to be happy, prosperous, and free. It was going to be the first country to acknowledge me as Supreme Ruler of the Entire Earth Solar System and Nearby Space if our plans were successful. We wanted it to be a shining example for other troubled places as well.

It was a lot for an eight-year-old. It was a lot for anyone. Already people were being killed in Guatemala because of what we were doing. Mostly they were bad people, at least so far, but if complete chaos broke loose, it would be almost impossible to prevent more widespread bloodshed, not just in Guatemala, but throughout the region.

I don’t want to bore you with all the details and stuff, so let me tell you what we were doing in Guatemala as my family and I ate, slept and planned.

The bodies of the two assassins that Rafael had killed were picked up by our drones. Using LITV booths, we placed them on the front steps of the Palace of Justice in Guatemala City. This building housed the country’s Supreme Court. We used lasers to etch words into the stones of the steps overnight. The words said, "These men were corrupt officers of the law sent by a police commissioner who wanted to protect his own criminal acts from being revealed."

We had Joe prepare a video, it showed Commissioner Rodriguez ordering the two to kill Rafael Camal de Leon in his district office, both of them in uniform at the time. It showed them later loading rifles into a car, in plain clothes. Then lying in wait and firing at Rafael as he exited a popular restaurant. He charged at them. The video even captured his words, "You can put down the rifle and live." Somehow, the words seemed more like an actual offer of mercy, than a cruel taunt on the video than they had in real life and the video didn’t show Rafael’s crazed eyes filled with bloodlust. Then the two shots and Rafael going after the other gunman.

Overnight, the video appeared in the offices of every television news outlet and newspaper in Guatemala. When it was broadcast, of course, Rafael would be quickly identified by the journalists, and by his cartel associates. They would also identify Commissioner Rodriguez and find him gone from the country. His money transferred to secretive offshore banks.

Rafael would be backed into a very public and very uncomfortable corner.