Girl Friday – The Original Story
The Kiiahni had started out on Earth millennia ago with nothing but good intentions. They used their own DNA to create modern humans from the early hominids they found here. But the road to hell is surely paved with good intentions. In their decline over the millennia, the Kiiahni lost their freedom to High Command as well as all of those good intentions. In that same time, mankind had become their worst nightmare.
So, Kiiahni High Command set out to correct that. They set in motion a plan to wipe out all life on Earth. To them, it was as if humans were nothing but an experiment gone bad. At the last second, I sent their damned extinction device back through their own quantum wormhole. I killed almost a million souls that day and wiped out High Command. I thought that ended it once and for all. I thought my life would just go on from there. I was wrong.
Matthew Lockhart was the next human sucked into the whirling vortex of this intrigue. They killed his wife and put him on the run. But Kiiahni Plan-B had crossed the wrong man. Matt was pissed at what they had done to him and bent on vengeance. With every bit of technical skill that he could bring to bear, he was determined to take an eye for an eye. Matthew Lockhart did what Dr. Michael Phillips could not. He took the fight to Plan-B. Unfortunately, Laura Malone was sucked into that whirling cauldron of conflict. She would have been dead three times over but for Matt. Everyone thought that she was just the Girl Friday… they were wrong.
Earth is my homeworld, but is it really?
Girl Friday was the No. 7 Best Seller 8/3/2021 on Amazon
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Available on Amazon as a Kindle ebook
- File Size: 2563 KB
- Simultaneous Device Usage: Unlimited
- Publication Date: December 9, 2019
- Sold by:Amazon Digital Services LLC
- Language: English
- ASIN: B082L5Z37L
- Text-to-Speech: Enabled
- X-Ray: Not Enabled
- Word Wise: Enabled
- Lending: Enabled
- Screen Reader: Supported
- Enhanced Typesetting: Enabled
Paperback: Available at Amazon
- Series: Fusion (Book 2)
- Paperback: 168 pages
- Publisher: Independently published (December 10, 2019)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1673995144
- ISBN-13: 978-1673995145
- Product Dimensions: 6 x 0.4 x 9 inches
Audible.com as an Audio Book
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SAMPLE CHAPTERS
Chapter One
Prevailing thinking would have us believe that in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. But is he really? If he tells anyone what he sees, will they welcome the prophet or stone heretic? Human nature being what it is, the one-eyed man quickly learns from multiple stonings to keep what he sees to himself. Matthew Lockhart had not quite opened his eyes, and yet in his exceptional mind, he saw a mathematical order where others saw only chaos. Even so, did he really see?
Al Simmons, President of Fractal Systems, strode into Matthew’s office. “Well? Are you done yet?” he asked with arms crossed, glaring at Matthew.
Matthew looked up from his PC screen to answer. “Almost. I should be done some time tomorrow.”
“‘Almost’ isn’t good enough, and neither is ‘tomorrow.’ It has to be done tonight. That’s all there is to it.”
“But, I can’t…”
“Bull shit, you can’t. No excuses. Do whatever it takes. I’ve already told Derek Sanders that it was done, and it will be. There is big money hanging on this. I will get that next NSA contract, no matter what the cost.” And he had already billed the NSA for this work, not that he would have ever shared that information with Matthew. Simmons was entirely into the hall before he turned back to Matthew just to growl, “Finish it, damn it! No excuses! Just finish the damned thing!”
He was gone when Matthew pounded his fist on the desk.
“No excuses! No excuses!” He at once mocked and imitated Simmons.
Matthew buried his face in his hands. Face it now. Face it later. What’s the difference? He reached for the phone and dialed. “Hi, Hon, it’s me.”
“Yeah? Uh-huh?” She knew.
“I’m… uh …”
“Don’t give me that. Just say it.”
“I have to work late…”
“So much for your turning over a new leaf,” she accused him.
“I tried to explain…”
She slammed the phone in his ear.
It wasn’t bad enough to have to work into the night on this, now he couldn’t drive thoughts out of his mind of Mary getting drunk again. He could just see little Rebecca cowering under her bed until he got home. Visions tortured him and drove him on.
All this secret stuff! Move it all to one computer. Wipe out all traces. Shred all the hard copies. Only the documents on Matthew’s work laptop computer remained when seven turned toward eight. He looked at his personal laptop. It was identical to the one on his desk. Swap them, he thought. He could take the work laptop home and finish the work. No one would be the wiser. Tomorrow morning, he would swap them back. Those NSA people would examine it and be happy. That would solve his problem. He was locked up and headed for home only three hours late.
When the door locked behind Matthew, a quantum portal formed inside his office. Arii, a five-foot-four artificial woman, walked out of it. By the light streaming out of the open portal, she crossed the room and picked up Matt’s laptop.
“That will not work,” Arii said to herself when she booted the laptop and looked at it. She spent the next half hour making it all look perfect. The NSA guys were good, but she was better. When she was done, she set it back on Matt’s desk.
From there, she went out into the shop right up to the flight model on the test stand. She worked on that for another half hour before she declared, “I am invincible!”
“Put that in your pipe and smoke it,” she challenged them as she left.
A quantum portal closed behind her leaving the building dark once more.
Three hours late was nowhere near as bad as his usual. It was like that chicken-or-the-egg thing. Had his usual become so late because he didn’t want to go home to Mary’s wrath? Or had Mary’s anger grown out of his always being late? When had she fallen out of love with him? When would she slam the door in his face and divorce him? If it were just Mary, he would welcome the blessed relief, but there was Rebecca. Not that Mary loved her one small bit as much as he did, but that Mary could hurt him so by hurting Rebecca. He drove on still faster.
“I’m home,” Matthew called from the door as he walked in. He hung his jacket and set his computer in the closet. There was a dish of cheese and pepperoni on the counter, as though set out for company. He could hear the television in the living room, so he followed the sound. Mary sat asleep in a chair. There was a bottle of wine open on the table and two glasses.
She rolled toward the sound of his approach and cracked open an eye on her now smiling face. Her face turned into rolling thunder when she saw it was him. “Bastard! Why did you bother to come home now?”
“I’m trying…”
“Bull shit, you’re trying!”
Matthew wanted to scream at her, belt her one. She deserved it if anyone ever did, but he was more of a man than that. He would not let her goad him into that. No way. He swallowed his anger.
“I’m sick of your trying,” she screamed at him just before launching a glass in his direction.
That was it. Matthew went to Rebecca’s room. She was cowered to the back of her bed, up against the wall. She smiled out at him from behind her teddies and dollies.
“Come to daddy.”
She scrambled into his arms just as the second glass ricocheted off Matthew’s ear. Glass showered the bed. There was a warm wet oozing down the side of his head, but rage drove him on now.
He grabbed handfuls of clothes for Rebecca and for himself while Mary slapped and punched him. She knew that he was leaving. She tried to rip Rebecca from his arms. In a rage, he shoved her away. In her drunken stupor, she fell to the floor. Matt used the opportunity to run for the door. From the corner of his eye, he saw Mary stand up and throw something at him. He ducked behind the coat closet door in the nick of time.
Arms full of clothes, computer, and Rebecca were all laid on the front seat of his car. He hurriedly buckled Rebecca in. He just didn’t have the time right now to put her in her car seat in the back. That would just have to do for now. The car was moving before his logical mind once more took hold.
“It’s okay, Honey. Daddy’s got you now.”
“Becca loves you, Daddy.” She got up and held onto him.
“Daddy loves you, dear.” She was in her pajamas. The car was warm, but he still had to get her into a coat.
Matthew turned at the first cross street and turned again at the next. He parked almost squarely around the block from his house. Rebecca held onto him and nuzzled into his face. His hands shook. His heart was pounding. He just held her for a while. He didn’t know for how long he rocked her in his arms. It seemed like an eternity but was probably more like an hour or so.
When thought finally began again in his mind, he looked down at Becca, she was asleep. He wrapped her in a blanket and set her in her car seat in the back. Napkins from a hamburger joint wiped the now half-dried blood from his cut ear. He looked at his car’s clock. It said ten-thirty-seven.
For all the genius that was Matthew Lockhart, he didn’t know what to do, where to turn. He just sat there, unable to think. Headlights turned toward him. He slouched down low, not wanting anyone to see him in such a pathetic state. The van stopped two houses in front of him. A man got out. The van left. That seemed very odd. The man just stood there on the sidewalk, looking up and down the street. He appeared to be talking to himself at times.
Matthew had no time for mysteries tonight. He had to think. Where could he and Rebecca spend the night? Andy would have them – Matthew’s brother Andy. He wouldn’t ask a million questions. That’s where he would go. He had about made up his mind when the van came speeding back. It stopped sharply to pick up the man. For just a fleeting second, a face appeared in the side window. Matthew had seen that face before. He was sure of it, but that wasn’t important now. The van sped away…
Andy had fallen asleep in his chair when the noise of someone rapping on his door woke him. He opened his door, not quite awake and with only one eye really open, to find his brother Matt standing there with Rebecca over his shoulder and a bag in his other hand. The look on Matt’s face told a hundred stories.
“Big trouble in little China?” Andy asked.
“Yeah,” was all that Matt could manage.
“Come on in. You can put sleeping beauty in my bed.”
“Thanks.” Matthew laid Becky on the bed and covered her up. Andy had a beer waiting for him when he got to the living room. Matt drank it slowly. It didn’t help. Matt just needed some time to reorganize his thoughts.
After a few minutes, Andy looked at his ear and asked, “Mary drunk again?”
“Yeah, but more like just plain mean. Damn. It’s my own fault this time. I let that bastard Simmons make me stay late again. That set her off.”
“It’s always like that with you executive types.”
“It comes with the territory.”
“No, it doesn’t.”
“It’s expected.”
“Yeah, like they own you. It’s a job, man, not a prison. The more they see you knuckle under, the more they expect. And you always were a work-a-holic. You just play right into their hands.”
“Yeah, I guess you’re right.”
“You know I’m right.”
“So, where do I go from here?”
Andy smiled. “I don’t know. You can stay here until you figure it out.”
The late news was on while they talked. In the lull of their conversation, Matthew heard words that froze him.
“…Alfred Simmons, President of Fractal Systems, and his wife, Caroline, were murdered tonight in what the police are calling an apparent drug deal gone bad. Witnesses say that some members of what looked to be a cartel hit squad attacked the house swiftly and sped off in a dark, late model van before anyone realized…”
Matthew turned to his brother. “My God!” He was dumbstruck. Video from the scene showed Al and his wife’s bodies being taken from the house.
The newscast continued. “…In a related case, according to police sources, John Patricks, Comptroller of Fractal Systems, died earlier tonight in a gang-land style ambush…”
“This can’t be,” Matt blurted out. “I know these people.”
“Maybe not as well as you think.”
“No. No. You don’t understand. I know them. I really know them.”
“…Please stand by.” The newsman was handed some papers from someone off-camera and read from them. “It is a grim night, indeed. In what police are calling a ‘company connection,’ Dr. Matthew Lockhart, Senior Research Associate for Fractal Systems, and his wife, Mary, were murdered by the same cartel hit squad. Elaine Piper is on the scene. Elaine?”
The video switched to her. “Irv, I am talking to a Mr. Michael Fortuna.” Matthew saw his next-door neighbor. “Mr. Fortuna, what did you see?” He was near tears and covered with blood but managed to answer. “Well, I heard all this noise. I thought guns were louder than that. And I rushed next door, to Matt’s place. And the door was wide open.” Mike turned away.
Elaine Piper pressed him. “Please, Mr. Fortuna. What did you see? Tell us what you saw.”
“Dear God! There was blood everywhere. Aw shit. And Matt and Mary! Aw shit. They were all shot up, all shot up. It was like nothing I’ve ever seen. It was like something out of a gangster movie.” Mike’s eyes were full of tears. “They made a mess of my buddy Matt. Aw God!”
Mike could not continue.
Elaine carried on. “Irv, a police spokesman told me that Mr. and Mrs. Lockhart were killed in bed as they slept. They never stood a chance…”
Matthew found himself standing in total disbelief of what he was seeing.
“Oh my God! I’ve got to…”
Andy put a hand on his shoulder. “Hold on, Bro.”
“Hold on? Someone killed Mary!”
“Yeah, and someone else sleeping in your bed.”
“But…”
“Yeah, but just who were they trying to kill?”
It hadn’t occurred to him.
“Maybe you are right. But I have to do something.”
“Like go to the police?”
“Yes. Exactly.”
“And tell them what? That you are not a drug dealer? Oh Yeah. They’ll for sure believe that one. Yeah, right! And just how long will it take them to realize that all those people were killed and by some miracle, you were the only one that got missed? How many times life will the prison sentence be?”
Matthew was lost for words. Andy paced for a few minutes then turned to him. “Think! Think and live! Use that super thinker of yours to stay alive now.”
The phone broke into their conversation.
Andy put a finger to his lips before picking it up.
“Hello… Yes, this is Andrew Lockhart… Yes… I’ll have to get dressed. Where are they?” Andy wrote the address of the city morgue on a scrap of paper. “Yes. I’ll come right away.” He put the phone down and turned to his brother. “It was the police. They want me to identify the bodies. I’ll find out whatever I can. You stay right here. Don’t make a sound. I’ll rap an ‘L’ on the door when I get back.” It was a Morse code secret signal they had shared since childhood.
Andy went into his bedroom. He came out holding a pump-action shotgun and thrust it at Matt. Matt was still in shock as Andy put on his jacket and headed for the front door. Andy only hesitated long enough to say, “These people play for keeps. Life doesn’t forgive mistakes, Bro. Think. Think and live.” Then he was gone.
Matthew sat for an endless stream of seconds in what would have been a dark room but for the flickering light of the television. As each second ticked, he was torn in a new direction. He wanted to scream out but couldn’t find the will to do it. Chaos reigned in his mind, but to Matthew, chaos was like an old friend. He held nothing back, and for a moment, it was as though the essence of Matthew was watching his own mind think.
A rap on the door broke the spell, an “L” in Morse code. Matthew heard a key in the lock. The door pushed slowly open. “It’s me,” Andy whispered loudly. He walked in and turned on a light.
Matthew turned away from it. “Well?”
“It wasn’t very pretty. They were shot up bad. Do you really want to hear this? It was way past gruesome, man. It was a lot worse than I expected.”
“I have to hear it. You have to tell me.”
“Okay, then. An M-16 on AUTO doesn’t leave much to identify, if you know what I mean.”
Matthew nodded for him to go on.
“Little doubt it was Mary.”
“And the man?”
Andy shook his head “no” and shrugged. “They showed me a jogging suit. There were some keys on a chain, and a few bucks. I said they were yours. I told them I recognized the tattoo on your arm.”
“But I don’t have any tattoos,” Matt replied.
“Yeah, I know that, but they didn’t. It’s official. For now, you are dead.”
Andy plunked down on the couch. It had not been an easy night for either of them. He put his face in his hands and talked toward the floor. “I will wait till after the funeral. When things have calmed down, I’ll tell Mom and Dad. I’ll tell them.”
Andy looked up at him. “What are you mixed up in?”
“My God! You don’t think…”
“No. I know you better than that. I knew it could never be drugs. But Mary? Maybe she was somehow involved.”
“No. I can’t believe that.”
“They showed me pictures of drugs stashed in dresser drawers – your dresser drawers.”
“That can’t be. I pulled some clothes out of that dresser just before I left. There was nothing in any of those drawers but clothes.”
“Maybe he brought the drugs with him. Look at all the evidence. Who knew you were working late? Who could have known when you left?”
“It would have to be someone from work.”
Matthew sat in his parked car, some ways back from the parking lot. He watched the door through Andy’s spotting scope. Whoever he was, he would not show for work this morning. Matthew’s list was full of checkmarks when the first police cruiser pulled into the parking lot. It was followed by two more, and a white van. It wasn’t a police van, though. It had no police markings. All Matthew could see of the occupants were the backs of their heads as they climbed out of the van and headed for the building.
Two men emerged minutes later carrying his personal computer and boxes of files. A third man followed them. He walked away from Matthew, toward the police standing by one of the cruisers. He walked up to one of them and shook his hand. They talked for several minutes until a man Mathew knew only too well came out of the door – Derek Sanders. Then the man turned around. His was the face, the face in the van last night, the face that Matthew knew, but couldn’t remember. He was Derek Sander’s own personal bodyguard.
~~~
“Andy, this is worse than I ever imagined.”
“I didn’t think it could get much worse than this.”
“Mary’s lover had nothing to do with anything. He was just some poor schmuck with severely bad timing and bad taste in women.”
“Oh, I don’t…”
“And this whole thing had nothing to do with drugs, either.” Matthew took hold of his brother. “Andy, listen. The people that killed Mary were NSA.”
“NSA?”
“Yeah, National Security Agency.”
“Don’t you mean CIA?”
“No. The CIA is just a front for a more secret organization – the NSA. Our own government did this.”
“And this guy you saw was the head mucky-muck?”
“Yes. Derek Sanders was just recently promoted to Director of the NSA. He sits at the right hand of the President himself. And the face I saw in the van last night belongs to his own personal bodyguard.”
Andy sat for a moment in silence.
“You were right, Matt. It is worse than I thought.”
Andy took Becky over to Grandma and Grandpa’s house.
“Don’t ask,” Andy told them. “Only thank God that she was staying with me. Don’t watch the TV, and for Heaven’s sake, don’t believe one word of anything for now.”
“Why? What is going on?” Andy’s mom demanded to know.
“You don’t want to know,” Andy insisted and left.
Staying with Grandma and Grandpa was a treat for little Rebecca. She was the only light in what were some of Grandma and Grandpa’s darkest hours. Two weeks of constant rain and storms only reflected the grief in their hearts.
And then came the knock on their door, late in the evening. Dad opened the door.
“Andy, hi. What brings you out so late?”
Andy looked over his shoulder.
“Dad, Mom, I have something to tell you.”
“Come in, Son.”
Andy stepped in and closed the door.
“Please, believe me, there was no way I could have told you this earlier.” He spoke to his Mom.
“What on earth could you possibly not tell us?”
“I would have put your lives in danger if I had told you. We had to check, check, and double-check and triple-check everything and everybody. We had to be absolutely certain.”
“We?”
Andy turned the porch light off and on and then back off. Then he opened the door. Matthew was standing on the sidewalk in the rain.
Becky hit his arms at full speed as he crossed the threshold. “Daddy! Becca love you! Where were you?” The next moment he was swept up in his parents’ joy. It wasn’t until things calmed down and explanations filled, that Matthew’s Dad asked, “Won’t they be watching the house?”
“At first they were,” Andy told him. “I think just to reassure themselves, but then last week they left, and they haven’t been back since.”
“What are you going to do, Matt?” his mother asked.
“It has already been done, Mom. When Mary got so bad, I worried about her spending the budget on some drunken binge or just to get my goat. I have had some private bank accounts for quite some time. I put a lot of money away.”
“But the money will only last so long,” his father told him.
“I bought a new identity for Rebecca and me, but I will have to go ahead to test the waters. I have to know that it’s iron-clad safe before I take Becky.”
Matthew’s mother looked long at him. “There’s a look in your eyes. I have never seen that look in you before. It doesn’t give my soul any rest.”
“You see my sorrow.”
“You still loved her.”
“Yes, I did.”
“After all that she did to you?”
“I am not without blame. She died because of me.”
~~~
Over the next week, Derek Sanders’ NSA satellite experts carefully installed the stolen stabilizing platform and began their preflight testing…
“Sabotaged?” Derek almost shouted at the image of his Chief Engineer on the large screen in his office. “What do you mean, sabotaged? Are you sure?”
“Oh, it was purposely done,” the Chief Engineer told him calmly. “The saboteur even signed their damned name to it as if to shove it in your face and laugh at you. His or her nick is Ar2i. Does that mean anything to you?”
“No,” Derek Sanders told him angrily.
So the Chief Engineer continued, “The flight hardware refused to run and kept us tied up with endless false error codes. So, we went to the documentation to figure out why that was. That’s when we discovered that the documentation had all been sabotaged too.”
“But this was all flight certified and bought off by your inspection team!” Derek reminded him. “Your own people wrote off on it!”
“Yes, they did. It ran flawlessly before it was sabotaged. It passed all the pre-flights at Fractal Systems with flying colors. Our best engineers looked at all of the documentation, and that was accepted, too. But that is not what we have now. What we have now was deliberately sabotaged.”
“Well, what are we going to do?” Derek asked him.
“I am sorry to tell you this, but we have no other choice now but to start from scratch. At this late stage, we will have to find another supplier,” his Chief Engineer told him.
“Just do it!” Derek told him in utter frustration. “Just do it. Delays on this project are killing me.” Derek cut the connection.
~~~
In the deepest pit of despair, Matthew Lockhart sat alone in the dark. His mind was numb and for all of his genius, he hadn’t a clue where to turn or what to do next. So, he turned on his laptop out of habit and waited while it started up. His email program started automatically. It brought up his work account and his several private email accounts. His work account had been closed. He expected that, but his personal accounts were an endless stream of emails that had only slowed a bit since his ‘death.’
At the top of that heap was an encrypted NSA email marked URGENT. But it wasn’t sent from the NSA. The original email had been sent to someone named Ron Hawkins at MicroMotions. Then someone named ‘ar2i’ stole a copy and sent it to him.
“Who the hell is ar2i?” Matt asked out loud.
Subject: URGENT – Matt, you really need to see this right away.
There was a message at the top.
Matt, I sabotaged the stabilizer before the NSA took it. I sabotaged the documentation too. All the NSA bastards got was a hand full of smoke – totally useless. I left them holding their hands on their asses. I did my part. Now the ball is in your court… Ar2i
“Good God!” he said in a whisper.
Matt put his security card into the slot in his computer. The attachment decrypted. It was a request-to-bid for a stabilizer exactly like Matt’s. He looked back at the note from Ar2i. It was true! Ar2i had taken from Derek Sanders what he had killed Mary and everyone at Fractal Systems to get! Alright, ar2i! Whoever you are, I love you. Now Matt’s mind was ablaze with purpose. The ball was in his court.