Requests for action. Payments assured. Payments revoked. Reward conferred and reward withheld; sanctions and incentives systematically applied. Information came in. Information went out. It was a computer networked to countless others around the world, receiving and generating a pulse of binary digits, a cascade of ones and zeros, of logic gates in closed or open position, each as insubstantial asthe atoms from which mighty edifices are built. Instructions were digitally issued, modified. Data was collected, collated, and assessed. Sizable sums flashed around the world, digitally transferred from one financial institution to another, and another, ending up in numbered accounts nested within other numbered accounts. More instructions were issued; more agents were enlisted through a multiplex of cutaways.
Within the room, a face was illuminated only by the moon-glow of the screen. Yet the recipients of the communications were denied even that glimpse. The guiding intelligence remained hidden to them, as vaporous as the morning mist, as distant as the sun that burns it away. A snatch of an old spiritual drifted into the personâs mind. Heâs got the whole world in his hands.
The tapping of the keys was almost lost among the ambient noises, but these were the sounds of knowledge and action, of the resources to translate the first into the second. These were the sounds of power. In the lower left corner of the keyboard were the key caps marked COMMAND and CONTROL . It was not an irony so much as an aptness, and not one lost upon the person seated before the computer. That soft crackling was, indeed, the sound of command and control.
A final, encoded transmission was made. It concluded with one sentence: Time is of the essence.
Time, the one entity that could be neither commanded nor controlled, would have to be honored and respected.
Agile fingers, a soft crackling of keys, and the sign-off was typed. GENESIS.
For hundreds of people around the planet, it was a name to conjure with. For many, it meant opportunity and quickened their sense of avarice. For others, it meant something very different, and made their blood run cold, haunted their nightmares. Genesis. The beginning. But of what?
Chapter Four
Belknap slept during the flight to Romeâhe had always taken pride in his ability to store up sleep, given the opportunityâbut his sleep was troubled, memory-haunted, even tormented. And when he pulled himself from his slumbers, the memories crowded his mind like flies on a carcass. He had lost so much in his life, and he refused to let Rinehart confirm a hateful pattern: the destruction of those he cared most about. Sometimes it felt like a curse, the sort found in Greek tragedy.
Once, his life was going to be different. Once, Belknapâhaving been deprived, in his early adulthood, of his own familyâwas himself going to be a family man. The memories swam into view, darted into darkness, eluded his grasp, then, in a gyre of pain, circled back to bruise him.
The wedding itself had been a quiet affair. A few friends and colleagues of Yvetteâs at the State Departmentâs Bureau of Intelligence and Research, where she worked as a translator; a few colleagues of Belknapâs, whose parents had died long before and who had no close family. Jared, of course, was his best man, and his hovering, friendly presence was a kind of benediction in itself. The first night of their honeymoon at a resort near Punta Gorda, Belize. It had been the end of an enchanted day. They had seen parrots and toucans perched in palm trees, dolphins and manatees sporting in the azure waters, and had been astounded by the call of the howler monkeyâit was almost like the roar of the oceanâbefore they learned the source. Before lunch, they had taken a boat out to the small reef, visible as a line of white surf about half a mile offshore, and there, as they wentdiving, another magical realm revealed itself to them.
Within the room, a face was illuminated only by the moon-glow of the screen. Yet the recipients of the communications were denied even that glimpse. The guiding intelligence remained hidden to them, as vaporous as the morning mist, as distant as the sun that burns it away. A snatch of an old spiritual drifted into the personâs mind. Heâs got the whole world in his hands.
The tapping of the keys was almost lost among the ambient noises, but these were the sounds of knowledge and action, of the resources to translate the first into the second. These were the sounds of power. In the lower left corner of the keyboard were the key caps marked COMMAND and CONTROL . It was not an irony so much as an aptness, and not one lost upon the person seated before the computer. That soft crackling was, indeed, the sound of command and control.
A final, encoded transmission was made. It concluded with one sentence: Time is of the essence.
Time, the one entity that could be neither commanded nor controlled, would have to be honored and respected.
Agile fingers, a soft crackling of keys, and the sign-off was typed. GENESIS.
For hundreds of people around the planet, it was a name to conjure with. For many, it meant opportunity and quickened their sense of avarice. For others, it meant something very different, and made their blood run cold, haunted their nightmares. Genesis. The beginning. But of what?
Chapter Four
Belknap slept during the flight to Romeâhe had always taken pride in his ability to store up sleep, given the opportunityâbut his sleep was troubled, memory-haunted, even tormented. And when he pulled himself from his slumbers, the memories crowded his mind like flies on a carcass. He had lost so much in his life, and he refused to let Rinehart confirm a hateful pattern: the destruction of those he cared most about. Sometimes it felt like a curse, the sort found in Greek tragedy.
Once, his life was going to be different. Once, Belknapâhaving been deprived, in his early adulthood, of his own familyâwas himself going to be a family man. The memories swam into view, darted into darkness, eluded his grasp, then, in a gyre of pain, circled back to bruise him.
The wedding itself had been a quiet affair. A few friends and colleagues of Yvetteâs at the State Departmentâs Bureau of Intelligence and Research, where she worked as a translator; a few colleagues of Belknapâs, whose parents had died long before and who had no close family. Jared, of course, was his best man, and his hovering, friendly presence was a kind of benediction in itself. The first night of their honeymoon at a resort near Punta Gorda, Belize. It had been the end of an enchanted day. They had seen parrots and toucans perched in palm trees, dolphins and manatees sporting in the azure waters, and had been astounded by the call of the howler monkeyâit was almost like the roar of the oceanâbefore they learned the source. Before lunch, they had taken a boat out to the small reef, visible as a line of white surf about half a mile offshore, and there, as they wentdiving, another magical realm revealed itself to them.
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